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NATIVE LIFE IN

EAST AFRICA

The Author

NATIVE LIFE IN EAST AFRICA
THE RESULTS OF AN ETHNOLOGICAL RESEARCH EXPEDITION

BY

DR. KARL WEULE

DIRECTOR OF THE LEIPZIG

ETHNOGRAPHICAL MUSEUM AND PROFESSOR AT

THE UNIVERSITY OF LEIPZIG

TRANSLATED BY

ALICE WERNER

NEW YORK

D APPLETON AND COMPANY

1909

CONTENTS

ILLUSTRATIONS

Translator’s Introduction

The greater thoroughness and system with which anthropology and the kindred sciences have been cultivated in Germany than in this country, has been repeatedly brought home to us; but in nothing is it more apparent than in the difficulty of finding equivalents for quite elementary technical terms. The distinction between ethnology and ethnography, indeed, is pretty generally recognized, and is explained in works as popular in scope as Professor Keane’s Ethnology and Man Past and Present. But Vōlkerkunde, which includes both these sciences and some others besides, is something which certainly cannot be translated by its etymological equivalent “folklore;” and, though the word “prehistoric” is perfectly familiar, we have no such noun as “prehistory,” far less a professorship of the same in any university. These remarks are suggested by the fact that Dr. Weule, whose experiences in East Africa are here presented to the English reader, is “Professor of Vōlkerkunde und Urgeschichte” at Leipzig, besides being Director of the Ethnographical Museum in the same city.

Dr. Karl Weule, whose name is less well known in England than in his own country, has in the past devoted himself rather to geography than to ethnography proper. He was a pupil and friend of the late Friedrich Ratzel, whose History of Mankind was translated into English some years ago, and whose Politische Geographie gave a new direction to the study of that science in its more immediate relation to the historical development of mankind, or what is now called “anthropogeography.” It was Ratzel, too, who suggested to Dr. Helmolt the idea of his Weltgeschichte, a comprehensive history of the world, built up out of detached monographs, including three by Dr. Weule, on the historical importance of the three great oceans. (Only one of these appears in the English edition, with introduction by Professor Bryce, published in 1901). Dr. Weule returned to the same subject in his History of Geography and Exploration (Geschichte der Erdkenntnis und der geographischen Forschung) and a detached essay, Das Meer und die Naturvōlker (both published in 1904), with various other monographs of a similar character.

After completing his university studies at Göttingen and Leipzig, Dr. Weule resided from 1891 to 1899 at Berlin, first as a member of the Richthofen Seminary, where his work was more purely geographical, and afterwards as assistant in the African and Oceanian section of the Ethnological Museum. In 1899 he was appointed to the Assistant Directorship of the Leipzig Museum, and at the same time to the chair which he still occupies at that University; and, seven years later, he was entrusted with the research expedition described in the following pages, where its scope and objects are set forth with sufficient clearness to render further reference in this place unnecessary. After his return he was promoted to the appointment he now holds at the Leipzig Museum.

His residence in Africa lasted a little over six months, and the record before us shows that he made good use of his time. Several features in his narrative have the merit of novelty, at least as far as the general reader is concerned; for though the cinematograph and phonograph have been made use of for some time past in the service of anthropology, yet we do not remember to have seen the results of the latter figuring to any great extent in a work of this sort, though Sir Harry Johnston has reproduced one phonographic record of a native air in his Uganda Protectorate. (It is very unfortunate that so many of Dr. Weule’s cinematograph films proved a disappointment; this instrument is proving one of the most valuable adjuncts to exploration, especially in the case of tribes whose peculiar customs are rapidly passing away before the advance of civilization). Another point which imparts great freshness to Dr. Weule’s work is the happy inspiration which led him to collect native drawings; the sketches by his carriers and especially the portrait of the author himself on p. [368] are decided contributions to the gaiety of nations, and strike out a line unworked, so far as I am aware, by previous travellers. It is a matter of deep and lasting regret to me, personally, that I ever parted with a similar gem of art, picked up at Blantyre, and presumably representing a European engaged in inspecting his coffee plantation.

This whole question of native African art is very interesting. Properly speaking, nothing in the way of indigenous graphic art is known to exist in Africa, outside Egypt and Abyssinia, (if indeed it can be called indigenous in the latter case), except the rock paintings of the Bushmen, which, as is well known, have in some cases attained real excellence. (The best published reproductions up to the present date are contained in the late G. W. Stow’s Native Races of South Africa.) In South Africa wherever Bantu natives have executed any paintings beyond the simplest geometrical patterns, they are found to have learnt the art from Bushmen. The natives on Mount Mlanje (Nyasaland) decorate their huts with paintings of animals, but these have not yet been sufficiently examined to pronounce on their quality; and, on the other hand, many things render it probable that there is a strong Bushman element in the population of Mlanje (at least in the indigenous Anyanja, who have been only partly displaced by the Yaos). Dr. Weule states that this kind of “fresco” decoration is very common on the Makonde Plateau, but considers that it is entirely on the same level as the drawings of his carriers—i.e., that it shows no artistic aptitude or tradition, and merely consists of scrawls such as those with which innate depravity impels every untaught human being to deface any convenient blank space. The single specimen reproduced in his book is not precisely calculated to refute his theory, yet it is no rougher than some of the cruder Bushmen drawings (which show every conceivable degree of skill and finish); and, if the daubs in question are merely the product of the universal gamin instinct, surely, huts having clay walls would everywhere be adorned with animal-paintings, which is by no means the case.

The comparative value of Dr. Weule’s various results must be left to the judgment of experts; but it seems safe to assume that he was most successful in what may be called the outside part of his task: in forming a collection and in describing what is visible and tangible in the life and customs of the people. That he should have failed to penetrate their inner life is scarcely surprising. What does surprise one is that he should have expected to do so at such exceedingly short notice. His disappointment in this respect at Masasi, and subsequently at Chingulungulu, is calculated to provoke a smile, if not “from the sinful,” at least from the veteran in African experience. The greater his experience the more is the inquirer inclined to hesitate before putting direct questions even when they cannot be described as “leading”; but Dr. Weule seems to have recognized no other mode of investigation. The wonder is that the elders, officially convened by tuck of drum from village after village and set down to be pumped till both parties were heartily weary of the process, should have told him anything at all—as they undoubtedly did, and much of it, to judge from internal evidence, correct enough. The most sympathetic of travellers does not always find it easy to satisfy his thirst for knowledge, and Dr. Weule’s methods, on his own showing, were frequently such that I prefer to withhold any comment.

Dr. Weule devoted a considerable amount of time to the study of the languages spoken in the districts he visited, viz., Makua, Yao, and Makonde; but he does not appear to have published any linguistic documents beyond the songs, etc., given in the present volume. It is not clear whether he was aware of any work previously done in this direction, but he certainly speaks as though he were the first to reduce these idioms to writing, though abundant materials exist in print for the study of Yao, and the late Bishop Maples published a grammatical sketch of Makua which is excellent as far as it goes, not to mention the more recent work of Professor Meinhof. It is also extremely strange that, while insisting on the close relationship between the different languages of the Makonde Plateau, he should have overlooked the curious cleavage between Makua,—which has peculiarities directly connecting it with the distant Sechuana and Sesuto—and its neighbours.

Though the scene of Dr. Weule’s labours was repeatedly visited by Europeans, even before the German occupation, not much has been written about it in this country outside the publications of the Universities’ Mission. Livingstone ascended the Rovuma in 1862, to within thirty miles of Ngomano at the Lujende junction; his farthest point being apparently a little higher up than the camp occupied by Dr. Weule in August, 1906. He had hoped to find a navigable waterway to the immediate vicinity of Lake Nyasa; and, in fact, some natives told him that the Rovuma came out of the Lake; but the rapids and rocks made it impossible to take the boats beyond the island of Nyamatolo, which, though not marked on Dr. Weule’s map, must be somewhere near the mouth of the Bangala. Most of the names given by Livingstone are difficult to identify on recent maps; but this is not surprising, as native villages are usually known by the name of the chief or headman for the time being. It is true that some of these names are more or less permanent, being official or hereditary designations assumed by every successive functionary; but the population has shifted so much during the last forty years that the old names have been forgotten or transferred to other sites. Thus Mr. H. E. O’Neill, in 1882, found the Yao chief Chimsaka living in the eastern part of the Mavia Plateau a little east of 40° E, having been driven from his former place on the Upper Rovuma, more than two hundred miles to the west, by a raid of the Mangoni (Angoni or Maviti).

The country is still inhabited, as it was in Livingstone’s time, by the Makonde, Makua, and Matambwe tribes, with the Wamwera to the north in the hinterland of Lindi, and the Mavia (Mabiha) south of the Rovuma, but they have moved about a good deal within its limits, while the Yaos have penetrated it from the west. The raids of the Angoni or Maviti have also played a great part in these changes. Dr. Weule, as we shall see, made careful inquiries on the subject of these tribal migrations, and the information given to him fits in fairly well with what others have obtained from the Yaos in the Shire Highlands and the Angoni to the west of Lake Nyasa.

Livingstone returned to this region on his last journey, when he landed at Mikindani Bay (March 24, 1866) with those unfortunate camels and buffaloes whose sufferings on the jungle-march made his diary such painful reading. The choice of camels for transport in this country was certainly a mistake; but a greater mistake—and one which he bitterly regretted—was made in the choice of the men who drove the camels.

On this occasion, Livingstone followed the Rovuma by land as far as Mtarika’s (the old village about the Lujende confluence, near Chimsaka’s former abode, not the Mtarika’s which will be found marked in Dr. Weule’s map on the Lujende itself), and struck south-westward in the direction of the Lake, which he reached, near the mouth of the Mtsinje, on the 8th of August. The route followed some years previously by Dr. Roscher, who made his way from Kilwa to Lake Nyasa, sighting it November 24, 1859, a few weeks after its discovery by Livingstone, lies somewhat to the north-west of the country dealt with in this book, and nowhere touches the scene of Dr. Weule’s travels.

In 1875, the late Bishop Steere followed in Livingstone’s tracks, starting from Lindi on the first of November, and reaching Mwembe (Mataka’s village) in a little over five weeks. This was the first of a series of remarkable journeys accomplished by members of the Universities’ Mission, of which we need here only mention, that of the Rev. W. P. (now Archdeacon) Johnson and the late Rev. C. A. Janson in 1882. The station of Masasi was founded in 1876, and that of Newala in 1882; the buildings of the former were nearly all destroyed in the “Majimaji” rising of 1906, shortly before Dr. Weule’s visit, and are only now in process of reconstruction.

The Rovuma valley was further explored in 1882, by the late Joseph Thomson, whom the Sultan of Zanzibar had commissioned to examine its mineral resources, with a view to ascertaining if workable coal-seams existed. His report was, on the whole, unfavourable, though a French engineer, M. D’Angelvy, subsequently (in 1884) despatched on a similar errand, came to a different conclusion. The Livingstone expedition had found coal near Lake Chidia, in 1862; but up to the present day it has not been utilized.

Mr. H. E. O’Neill, when British Consul at Mozambique, did a great deal of exploring, in an unobtrusive way, between the coast and Lake Nyasa, and, in 1882 examined the country inland from Tungi Bay, and south of the Rovuma, being the first European to penetrate the Mavia Plateau and come in contact with that tribe who enjoyed among their neighbours the reputation of being “so fierce and inhospitable that no one dares to pass through their country.” This exclusiveness Mr. O’Neill found to be largely if not entirely the result of the persecution the Mavia had undergone at the hands of stronger tribes, particularly the Yaos, incited by coast slavetraders. They were unwilling to guide him to their villages, and took him there by night so that he might be the less likely to find his way there a second time; but, “when once their natural suspicions were allayed and confidence established, they were hospitable and generous, and showed neither distrust nor reserve. Indeed, they seemed to me to be a particularly simple-minded, harmless folk.” Men, as well as women, wear the pelele, or lip ring, as mentioned by Dr. Weule, who never came across the Mavia for himself. Of their wearing their hair in pig-tails, Mr. O’Neill says nothing—in fact, beyond the pelele, there was little to distinguish them from neighbouring tribes, and he was disposed to consider them a branch of the Makonde. His description of their villages hidden away in the thorny jungle and approached by circuitous paths recalls what Dr. Weule says as to the difficulty of finding the Makonde settlements without a guide. In the course of this journey Mr. O’Neill discovered Lake Lidede, and at one point of his march he looked down on the Rovuma Valley from the edge of the Mavia Plateau at almost the same point as that where Dr. Weule saw it from the opposite escarpment, as described on pp. [343]–4. It is interesting to compare the two accounts:—Mr. O’Neill’s is to be found in the Proceedings of the R.G.S. for 1882, p. 30.

Mr. J. T. Last, starting from Lindi on the 28th of October, 1885, made his way overland to Blantyre, via Newala, Ngomano and the Lujende Valley, in eleven weeks. He remarks on the “desolation of the country which was formerly well populated, as the sites of the old villages show; but now there is not a house to be seen”—through the raids of the Magwangara and others. Lions were as numerous as they appear to have been in 1906, and for a similar reason. One of Mr. Last’s carriers was dragged out of the grass shelter where the men were sleeping, thus affording an almost exact parallel to the incident related by Dr. Weule on pp. [394]–8.

At this time the country was under the nominal rule of the Sultan of Zanzibar, who stationed his officials at some of the places near the coast and exercised a somewhat intermittent and uncertain authority over the chiefs in the interior. By the treaty of 1890 the whole of the mainland as far back as Lakes Victoria and Tanganyika, between the Rovuma on the south, and the Umba River on the north, was handed over to Germany, while the protectorate over what remained of the Sultan’s dominions (viz., the islands of Zanzibar and Pemba) was taken over by the British Government.

It seems improbable that this immense territory can ever be colonised by Germans in the same way in which Canada and Australia have been colonised by ourselves. There are few if any parts where German peasants and workmen could expect to live, labour, and bring up families. So far as the country has been settled at all, it is on the plantation system: European capitalists cultivating large tracts of land by means of native labour. Some coffee plantations in Usambara are, we understand, flourishing fairly well, though not producing wealth beyond the dreams of avarice; but the system, if it is to be extended to the whole territory, does not augur well for the future. It is not a healthy one for employer or employed; it always tends in the direction of forced labour and more or less disguised slavery; and, in the end, to the creation of a miserable and degraded proletariat. Much more satisfactory is the method to which Dr. Weule extends a somewhat qualified approval (though there can be no doubt that it has his sympathies) of securing to the native his own small holding and buying his produce from him, as has been done, to some extent, with the best results, in our own Gold Coast Colony. Dr. Weule remarks, somewhat naively, that a wholesale immigration from Germany would be interfered with if the native “claimed the best parts of his own country for himself.” But surely a ver sacrum of the kind contemplated is unthinkable in the case of East Africa.

It is possible that the reader may be somewhat perplexed by Dr. Weule’s estimate—or estimates—of the native character. The recurring contradictions apparent in various parts of his book arise from the plan on which it is written. In the original edition, the traveller’s narrative takes the form of letters addressed to his wife and friends from the successive stages of his journey. This form has been dispensed with (beyond the dates at the head of each chapter) in translation,[^[1]] because the personal allusions, in a foreign dress, rather detract from than add to the interest of the narrative, and all the more so, as they are not, in a sense, genuine, but have been added, après coup, to impart an air of verisimilitude to the letters. The latter, in fact, were not written from the places at which they are dated, but were put into shape after the author’s return to Europe, from notes made on the spot, together with extracts from actual letters, not printed as a whole. This material, in order not to sacrifice the freshness of first impressions, has been used very much as it stood, and it will be noticed that, in many cases, the observations made at different places correct and qualify one another.

I am glad to find that Dr. Weule stands up for the native in respect of the old accusation of laziness. He shows that the people of the Makonde Plateau, at any rate, work pretty hard (in some points, as in their water-carrying, unnecessarily hard) for a living. He also defends them against the charge of improvidence, making it quite plain that they take infinite pains in storing their seed-corn for next season, and that, if they do not save more of their crops against a year of famine, instead of making the surplus into beer, it is because they have, under present circumstances, absolutely no means of keeping them. It is true that, in one passage, he seems to depreciate the industry of native women, by comparison with the work done by German maid-servants and farmers’ wives. But he forgets to make allowance for the difference of climate—and, perhaps, one may be permitted to doubt whether any human being really ought to work as hard as most German women do in town or country.

On the whole, Dr. Weule is kindly disposed towards the native. He does not seem entirely to have escaped the danger deprecated on p. [41]—at least it strikes one that some of the (doubtless not unmerited) castigations bestowed in the course of his pages might have been dispensed with by the exercise of a little more patience and tact; but he remained throughout on the best of terms with his carriers, and appears to have parted from Moritz, Kibwana and Omari, in spite of the trials to which they had subjected him in the exercise of their several functions, with no ill-feeling on either side. More than once he bears testimony to the uniform good manners of the people whose villages he visited, and to their homely virtues—their unfailing cheerfulness, their family affection, and their respect for parents. At the same time, he relates various incidents calculated to leave a less pleasant impression, though it must be remembered that the proportion they bear to the whole of native life is probably less than that borne by the criminal cases reported in our newspapers to the daily life and conduct of our population in general. Dr. Weule’s stay in Africa was surely long enough for him to see that the Bantu native is not in general bloodthirsty or ferocious; that, on the contrary, when not maddened by terror or resentment, he is gentle, reasonable, and even somewhat lacking in vindictiveness compared with other races. Yet, in the scientific report on the expedition (a publication several times alluded to in the course of the work before us) the author is, it seems to me, guilty of a grave injustice.

The reader will note that, on his return to the coast (see pp. [27]–9), he spent some time in studying the records of the Criminal Court at Lindi, though he does not here tell us anything about the results of his examination. Now these records certainly afford valuable material for the study of social conditions; but they should be used with discrimination. Dr. Weule does not give what is of the very first importance, the number of criminal cases and their proportion to the population, especially as the serious cases, which are brought for trial to Lindi, represent the whole of an extensive province. But he mentions two atrocities as a proof of the ignorance shown by certain German newspapers, which “during the last two years have thought it necessary to insist, over and over again, on the noble traits in the negro character,” and of the “predominance of low instincts in those sons of untamed nature” who have “an innate disposition to violence.” One of the cases in question was that of a woman who killed her own mother by a blow with the pestle used for pounding corn. But it is hardly fair to place this murder on the same footing as a crime committed out of mere brutal passion: the woman’s children had died, and she believed her mother to have caused their death by witchcraft. We know what horrible cruelties this belief has induced people not otherwise depraved to commit: an instance occurred only twelve or thirteen years ago, no further off than Clonmel. The other case, which is certainly revolting enough, was the revenge of a husband on a guilty wife. But both of them together prove absolutely nothing without information which would enable us to see whether they are to be regarded as exceptional, or as in any sense typical. The other incident given by way of proving that violence and brutality are “in the blood” of the native, is that of an unfortunate woman who, unsuspiciously passing through the bush, fell in with a band of unyago boys, and was by them seized and put into a slave-stick “out of mere mischief and enjoyment of violence.” The comment on this is that, unless the woman had been a stranger from a distance (who, under ordinary circumstances would not be very likely to travel alone), she must have known that there was an unyago in the neighbourhood, that if she traversed the bush in that direction she would do so at her peril, and that her trespassing on the forbidden ground was an act of the grossest impropriety combined with sacrilege. As for “delight in violence”—surely that, in one form or another, is an inherent attribute of the “human boy” in every part of the world, above all when he conceives himself to have a legitimate excuse?

The mention of the unyago mysteries suggests a subject on which Dr. Weule has obtained fuller information than any previous writer—at any rate on this part of Africa. It is surprising that he should have been able to secure so many photographs of the dances—especially those of the women—but these only constitute the more public part of the ceremonial. As to the instruction given to the younger generation, he does not seem to have got beyond generalities except in the case of the two old men who, when very drunk, began to dictate the actual formula in use, though they did not get to the end of it. Whether any tribal traditions, any myths, embodying the religious ideas of a far distant past, are handed down along with such practical teaching about life as the elders are able to give, does not appear—but from what we know about other tribes it seems highly probable. Among the Anyanja (Wanyasa) of Lake Nyasa, e.g., a story accounting for the origin of that lake is told. But perhaps many of the Makonde and Makua traditions have by this time been forgotten. It is evident that they have led a very unsettled life for the past forty or fifty years, besides being decimated by the slave-trade. (This circumstance, by the by, should always be remembered in connection with Dr. Weule’s pictures of native life, which leave a painfully squalid impression. I am far from wishing to idealize the “state of nature”; but neither the Zulus, nor the Anyanja, nor the Yaos of the Shire Highlands are so ignorant and careless of hygiene or so neglectful of their babies as the poor women of Chingulungulu and Masasi are represented by him to be.)

These “mysteries” are universal—or practically so—among the Bantu tribes of Africa, and no doubt most others as well. Usually they are spoken of as an unmixed evil, which Christian missionaries do all in their power to combat, and some are not backward in calling out for the civil power (in countries under British administration) to put them down. The subject is a difficult and far-reaching one, and cannot adequately be discussed here. My own conviction, which I only give for what it is worth, is that it is a great mistake to interfere with an institution of this sort, unless, perhaps, when the people themselves are ceasing to believe in it, in which case there is danger of its becoming a mere excuse for immorality. Otherwise, even the features which to our feelings seem most revolting are entwined with beliefs rooted in a conception of nature, which only the gradual advance of knowledge can modify or overthrow. And we must remember that the problem which these poor people have tried to solve in their own way is one which presses hardly on civilized nations as well. Parents and teachers have discovered the evil of keeping the young in ignorance, or leaving them to discover for themselves the realities of life; but many of them appear helplessly perplexed as to the best way of imparting that instruction.

As regards missions, Dr. Weule has not very much to say, but I am sorry to find that he cannot refrain from the cheap sneer about “Christianity not suiting the native,” which seems to be fashionable in some quarters. It seems to be a mere obiter dictum on his part—perhaps unthinkingly adopted from others—for he brings no arguments in support of his view, beyond remarking that Islam suits the African much better, as it does not interfere with his freedom. But some excuse may be found for those who hold that view in the erroneous conceptions of Christianity which have prompted various mistakes on the part of missionaries. It is quite true that such or such a system of complicated doctrinal belief, the product of long ages and a special environment, may not suit the African. It is also true that, if Christianity means Europeanisation—if it means that the African is to be made over into a bad imitation of an Englishman or German—it is impossible that it should gain any real hold on him. But it is no exaggeration to say that no people on earth are more capable—many are not so capable—of appreciating and acting on the spirit of the Gospel, of simple love and trust in the Eternal Goodness and goodwill towards their fellow-men.

The question is a wide one, which cannot be fully discussed within these limits. Missionaries have often made mistakes and acted injudiciously; they have in some cases done serious harm, not from failure to act up to their principles, but from error in those very principles and a fatal fidelity to them. They may have interfered between chiefs and people, and broken down customs better left alone, or may unwittingly have encouraged the wrong sort of converts by welcoming all and sundry, including fugitives from justice or people discontented with their home surroundings for reasons quite unconnected with high spiritual aspirations. Or again, they may incur blame for the deficiencies of alleged converts who, after honouring the mission with their presence for a time, depart (usually under a cloud) and victimise the first European who can be induced to employ them.

But there is another side to the matter. A man—whether consciously a follower of the Nietzschean doctrine or not—who thinks that “the lower races” exist to supply him with labour on his own terms, is naturally impatient of a religion which upholds the claims of the weak, and recognizes the status of man as man. Hinc illæ lacrymæ, in a good many cases. Honestly, I do not think this is Dr. Weule’s view. But I cannot quite get rid of the suspicion that he was repeating what he had heard from a planter, and that it was, in strict accuracy, the planter’s convenience, and not the native, that Christianity failed to “suit.” Anyone who has read a certain pamphlet by Dr. Oetker, or Herr von St. Paul Illaire’s Caveant Consules, or Herr Woldemar Schütze’s Schwarz gegen Weiss will not think this remark too strong.

It would be deplorable, indeed, if those writers had to be taken as typifying the spirit of German colonial administration in Africa, or indeed anywhere else. But I do not think we have any right to suppose that this is so. There has been, I think, too much militarism—and very brutal militarism, in some cases—in that administration; but this is an evil which appears to be diminishing. There is a tendency, perhaps, to worry the native with over-minute government regulations, which, no doubt, will as time goes on be corrected by experience. And there is no lack of humane and able rulers who bring to their task the same conscientious, patient labour which their countrymen have bestowed on scientific research; who are trained for their posts with admirable care and thoroughness, and grudge no amount of trouble to understand and do justice to the people under their care. They shall in no wise lose their reward.

A. WERNER.

CAPE GUARDAFUI

Native Life in East Africa

CHAPTER I
OUTWARD BOUND

Dar es Salam, Whit-Sunday, 1906.

Six months ago it would not have entered my head in my wildest dreams that I should spend my favourite festival, Whitsuntide, under the shade of African palms. But it is the fact, nevertheless. I have now been two days in the capital of German East Africa, a spot which may well fascinate even older travellers than myself. Not that the scenery is strikingly grand or majestic—on the contrary, lofty mountain-masses and mighty rivers are conspicuous by their absence, and the wide expanse of the open ocean contributes nothing directly to the picture, for Dar es Salam lies inland and has no seaview worth mentioning. The charm of the landscape lies rather in one of the happiest combinations of flashing waters, bright foliage, and radiant sunshine that can be imagined.

The entrance to the harbour gives to the uninitiated no hint of the beauty to come. A narrow channel, choked with coral reefs, and, by its abrupt turns, making severe demands on the skill of the pilot, leads to the central point of a shallow bay which seems to have no outlet. Suddenly, however, the vessel glides past this central point into an extraordinarily narrow channel, with steep green banks on either side, which opens out, before the traveller has had time to recover from his astonishment, into a wide, glittering expanse, covered with ships. That is the famous bay of Dar es Salam. In presence of the obvious advantages of this locality, one need not have lived for years in the country to understand why the Germans should have been willing to give up the old caravan emporium of Bagamoyo with its open roadstead for this splendid harbour, and thus make the almost unknown native village of Dar es Salam the principal place in the colony.[^[2]]

DAR ES SALAM HARBOUR

On the voyage out, I visited with much enjoyment both Mombasa and Zanzibar, though unfortunately prevented by an accident (an injury to my foot) from going ashore at the German port of Tanga. Of these two English centres, Zanzibar represents the past, Mombasa the present, and still more the future. It is true that Zanzibar has the advantage in its situation on an island at a considerable distance from the mainland, an advantage of which the mainland towns, however splendid their future development, will never be able to deprive it, since their lines of communication, both economic and intellectual, will always converge on Zanzibar. But since the completion of the Uganda Railway, Mombasa forms the real gateway to the interior, and will do so in an increasing degree, as the economic development of Central Africa—now only in its infancy—goes on. Whether our two great German railways—as yet only projected—can ever recover the immense advantage gained by Mombasa, the future will show. We must hope for the best.

NATIVE DANCE AT DAR ES SALAM

Mombasa and Zanzibar interested me more from a historical than from a political point of view. How little do our educated and even learned circles know of the exploration and development, the varied political fortunes of this corner of the earth on the western shore of the Indian Ocean! Only specialists, indeed, can be expected to know that this year is the jubilee of the French Admiral Guillain’s epoch-making work, Documents sur l’Histoire, la Géographie, et le Commerce de l’Afrique Orientale, but it is extremely distressing to find that our countryman, Justus Strandes’ Die Portugiesenzeit in Deutsch- und Englisch-Ostafrika (1899) is not better known. Most of us think that Eastern Equatorial Africa, considered as a field for colonization, is as much virgin soil as Togo, Kamerun and German South-West Africa, or the greater part of our possessions in the South Seas. How few of us realise that, before us and before the English, the Arabs had, a thousand years ago, shown the most brilliant capacity for gaining and keeping colonies, and that after them the Portuguese, in connection with and as a consequence of Vasco da Gama’s voyage to India round the Cape of Good Hope in 1498, occupied an extensive strip of the long coast, and maintained their hold on it for centuries? And yet these events—these struggles for East Africa form one of the most interesting chapters in the history of modern colonization. Here for the first time the young European culture-element meets with an Eastern opponent worthy of its steel. In fact that struggle for the north-western shores of the Indian Ocean stands for nothing less than the beginning of that far more serious struggle which the white race has waged for the supremacy over the earth in general, and in which they already seemed to be victorious, when, a few years ago, the unexpected rise of Japan showed the fallacious nature of the belief so long entertained, and perhaps also the opening of a new era.

STREET IN THE NATIVE QUARTER, DAR ES SALAM

Anyone who does not travel merely for the sake of present impressions, but is accustomed to see the past behind the phenomena of the moment, and, like myself, leaves the area of European culture with the express object of using his results to help in solving the great problem of man’s intellectual evolution in all its details, will find in the voyage to German East Africa a better opportunity for survey and retrospect than in many other great routes of modern travel.

This is the case as soon as one has crossed the Alps. It is true that even the very moderate speed of the Italian express gives one no chance for anthropological studies. In order to observe the unmistakable Teutonic strain in the population of Northern Italy, it would be necessary to traverse the plain of Lombardy at one’s leisure. But already in the Adige Valley, and still more as one advances through Northern and Central Italy, the stratification of successive races seems to me to be symbolized by the three strata of culture visible in the fields: corn below, fruit-trees planted between it, and vines covering them above. Just so the Lombards, Goths and other nations, superimposed themselves on the ancient Italian and Etruscan stocks. On the long journey from Modena to Naples, it is borne in upon one that the Apennines are really the determining feature of the whole Italian peninsula, and that the Romans were originally started on their career of conquest by want of space in their own country. The only place which, in May, 1906, produced an impression of spaciousness was the Bay of Naples, of which we never had a clear view during our four or five days’ stay. A faint haze, caused by the volcanic dust remaining in the air from the eruption of the previous month, veiled all the distances, while the streets and houses, covered with a layer of ashes, appeared grey on a grey background—a depressing and incongruous spectacle. The careless indolence of the Neapolitans, which as a rule strikes the industrious denizens of Central Europe as rather comical than offensive, requires the clear sky and bright sunshine, celebrated by all travellers (but of which we could see little or nothing), to set it off.

From our school-days we have been familiar with the fact that the countries bordering the Mediterranean—the seats of ancient civilisation—are now practically denuded of forests. Yet the landscape of Southern Italy and Sicily seems to the traveller still more unfamiliar than that of the northern and central districts; it is even more treeless, and therefore sharper in contour than the Etruscan and Roman Apennines and the Abruzzi. But the most striking feature to us inhabitants of the North-German plain are the river-valleys opening into the Strait of Messina, leading up by steep gradients into the interior of the country. At this season they seem either to be quite dry or to contain very little water, so that they are calculated to produce the impression of broad highways. But how terrible must be the force with which the mass of water collecting in the torrent-bed after heavy rains, with no forest-soil to keep it back, rushes down these channels to the sea! To the right and left of Reggio, opposite Messina, numbers of sinuous ravines slope down to the coast, all piled high with débris and crossed by bridges whose arches have the height and span of the loftiest railway viaducts.

It is scarcely necessary to say anything about Port Said and the Suez Canal. Entering the Red Sea, I entered at the same time a familiar region—I might almost say, one which I have made peculiarly my own—it having fallen to my share to write the monographs on the three oceans included in Helmolt’s Weltgeschichte.[^[3]] Of these monographs, that dealing with the Atlantic seems, in the opinion of the general reader, to be the most successful; but that on the Indian Ocean is undoubtedly more interesting from the point of view of human history. In the first place, this sea has this advantage over its eastern and western neighbours, that its action on the races and peoples adjacent to it was continued through a long period. The Pacific has historic peoples (historic, that is to say, in the somewhat restricted and one-sided sense in which we have hitherto used that term) on its north-western margin, in eastern Asia; but the rest of its huge circumference has remained dead and empty, historically speaking, almost up to the present day. The Atlantic exactly reverses these conditions: its historical density is limited to the north-eastern region, the west coast of Africa, and the east coast of the Americas being (with the exception of the United States) of the utmost insignificance from a historical point of view.

Now the Indian Ocean formed the connecting link between these two centres—the Mediterranean culture-circle in the west, and that of India and Eastern Asia in the east,—at a time when both Atlantic and Pacific were still empty and untraversed wastes of water. This, however, is true, not of the whole Indian Ocean, but only as regards its northern part, and in particular the two indentations running far inland in a north-westerly direction, which we call the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf. To-day, when we carry our railways across whole continents, and even mountain ranges present no insuperable obstacles to our canals, we imagine that masses of land as wide as the Isthmus of Suez or the much greater extent of the “Syrian Porte”—the route between the Persian Gulf and the Eastern Mediterranean—must have been absolute deterrents to the sea-traffic of the ancients. In a sense, indeed, this was the case; otherwise so many ancient rulers would not have attempted to anticipate us in the construction of the Suez Canal. But where technical skill is insufficient to overcome such impediments, and where at the same time the demand for the treasures of the East is so enormous as it was in classical and mediæval times, people adapt themselves to existing conditions and make use of navigable water wherever it is to be found. Only thus can be explained the uninterrupted navigation of the Red Sea during a period of several thousand years, in spite of its dangerous reefs and the prevailing winds, which are anything but favourable to sailing vessels.

Only one period of repose—one might almost say, of enchanted sleep—has fallen to the lot of the Red Sea. This was the time when Islam, just awakened to the consciousness of its power, succeeded in laying its heavy hand on the transition zone between West and East. With the cutting of the Suez Canal, the last shadow of this ancient barrier has disappeared, and the Red Sea and North Indian Ocean have regained at a stroke, in fullest measure, their old place in the common life of mankind.

The passengers on board our steamer, the Prinzregent, were chiefly German and English; and at first a certain constraint was perceptible between the members of the two nationalities, the latter of whom seemed to be influenced by the dread and distrust expressed in numerous publications of the last few years. Mr. William Le Queux’s Invasion of 1910 was the book most in demand in the ship’s library.

A more sociable state of things gradually came about during the latter part of the voyage; and this largely through the agency of an unpretending instrument forming part of my anthropological equipment. One day, when we were nearing the Straits of Bab el Mandeb, partly in order to relieve the tedium of the voyage, and partly in order to obtain statistics of comparative strength, I produced my Collin’s dynamometer. This is an oval piece of polished steel, small enough to be held flat in the hand and compressed in a greater or less degree, according to the amount of force expended, the pressure being registered by means of cogged wheels acting on an index which in its turn moves a second index on a dial-plate. On relaxing the pressure, the first index springs back to its original position, while the second remains in the position it has taken up and shows the weight in kilogrammes equivalent to the pressure. The apparatus, really a medical one, is well adapted for ascertaining the comparative strength of different races; but its more immediate usefulness appears to lie in establishing cordial relations between total strangers in the shortest possible time. On that particular hot morning, I had scarcely begun testing my own strength, when all the English male passengers gathered round me, scenting some form of sport, which never fails to attract them, young or old. In the subsequent peaceful rivalry between the two nations, I may remark that our compatriots by no means came off worst; which may serve to show that our German system of physical training is not so much to be despised as has been recently suggested by many competent to judge, and by still more who are not so competent.

In his general attitude on board ship, the present-day German does not, so far as my observations go, contrast in the least unfavourably with the more experienced voyagers of other nationalities. It is true that almost every Englishman shows in his behaviour some trace of the national assumption that the supremacy of the seas belongs to him by right of birth. Our existence, however, is beginning to be recognized—not out of any strong affection for “our German cousins,” but as a simple matter of necessity. If, for comfort in travel, one must have recourse to German ships; and when, at home and abroad, there is a German merchant-fleet and a German navy to be reckoned with, the first of which keeps up an assiduous competition, while the second is slowly but steadily increasing, these things cannot fail to impress even the less cultured members of the British nation. Only one thing is, and will be for many years to come, calculated to make us ridiculous in the eyes of Old England—and that is the Zanzibar Treaty. Never shall I forget the looks of malicious triumph and the sarcastic condolences which greeted us—the unfortunate contemporaries of the late Caprivi—when we came in sight of Zanzibar. My friend Hiram Rhodes, of Liverpool, the ever-smiling and universally popular, usually known as “the laughing philosopher,” from his cheerful view of life, was not as a rule given to sharp sayings, but with regard to the famous political transaction, I distinctly remember to have heard him use the expression, “Children in politics.” Caustic, but not undeserved! Another remark of his, after viewing Dar es Salam: “That is the finest colony I have ever seen!” served, it is true, as a touch of healing balm—but no amount of conciliatory speeches will give us back Zanzibar!

MAP OF THE MAIN CARAVAN ROAD, WITH ITS PRINCIPAL BRANCHES. DRAWN BY SABATELE, A MMAMBWE

The object of the journey on which I have embarked may now be briefly stated. Several decades since, and therefore before the beginning of our colonial era, the Reichstag voted an annual grant of some 200,000 marks for purposes of scientific research in Africa—purely in the interests of knowledge and without any ulterior intentions from a narrowly nationalist point of view. One might have expected that, after the establishment of our settlements in Africa and the Pacific, this fund would unhesitatingly have been devoted, wholly or in part, to the systematic exploration and study of these colonies of ours. But this has not been done, or only in a very uncertain and desultory manner—to the great grief of German scientific circles, who, under these circumstances, were forced to content themselves with the occasional reports of civil and military officials supplemented by sporadic research expeditions, official or private.

COURTYARD AT DAR ES SALAM—Dolce far niente

It was not till the first Colonial Congress in 1902 that a more vigorous agitation took place for the application of the African Fund on a large scale to the systematic investigation of our dependencies. From specialists in all branches of knowledge—geography and geology, anthropology and ethnography, zoology and botany, linguistics, comparative law, and the new science of comparative music—arose the same cry, with the result that, three years later, at the second Colonial Congress (October, 1905), we were in a position to state clearly the most pressing problems and mark out the principal fields of research in each subject. It might, however, have taken years to put the work in hand, but for the “Committee for the Geographical Exploration of the German Colonies,” and its energetic president, Dr. Hans Meyer, who rescued the proceedings from their normal condition of endless discussions, and translated them at one stroke into action. Dr. Jäger, Herr Eduard Oehler, and myself are the living proofs of this (in our country) unwonted rapidity of decision, being selected to carry out the instructions of the Committee (which is affiliated to the Colonial Office) and help to realise the long-cherished dream of German science.

The task of the two gentlemen I have mentioned is purely geographical, consisting in the examination of the interesting volcanic area situated between Kilimanjaro and the Victoria Nyanza, while I am commissioned to bring some order into the chaos of our knowledge concerning the tribes who occupy approximately the same region. It must be remembered that the country surrounding Lakes Manyara and Eyasi, and extending to a considerable distance south of them, swarms with tribes and peoples who, in spite of the fact that our acquaintance with them dates more than twenty years back, still present a variety of ethnological problems. Among these tribes are the Wasandawi, whose language is known to contain clicks like those of the Hottentots and Bushmen, and who are conjectured to be the forgotten remnant of a primæval race going back to prehistoric ages. The Wanege and Wakindiga, nomadic tribes in the vicinity of Lake Eyasi, are said to be akin to them. In the whole mass of African literature, a considerable part of which I have examined during my twenty years’ study of this continent, the most amusing thing I ever came across is the fact that our whole knowledge up to date of these Wakindiga actually results from the accident that Captain Werther had a field-glass in his hand at a given moment. This brilliant traveller, who traversed the district in question twice (in 1893 and 1896), heard of the existence of these people, but all that he saw of them was a distant telescopic view of a few huts. As yet we know no more of them than their bare name, conscientiously entered in every colonial or ethnological publication that makes its appearance.

Another group of as yet insufficiently-defined tribes is represented by the Wafiomi, Wairaku, Wawasi, Wamburu and Waburunge. All these are suspected of being Hamites, and some of them have evolved remarkable culture-conditions of their own. But, under the onrush of new developments, they are in danger of losing their distinctive character still more rapidly than other African peoples, and, if only for this reason, systematic observations are needed before it is too late. The same may be said of the Wataturu or Tatoga, who are undoubtedly to be looked on as the remnant of a formerly numerous population. They are said to speak a language related to Somali, but now live scattered over so wide a territory that the danger of their being effaced by absorption in other races is, if possible, still greater than in the case of the others. The last of the tribes which specially concern me are the Wanyaturu, Wairangi and Wambugwe. All of these belong to the great Bantu group, but have, in consequence of their isolation, preserved certain peculiarities of culture so faithfully that they too will be well worth a visit.

IN THE EUROPEAN QUARTER, DAR ES SALAM

With regard to the original home of the African race, this is a question to which ethnologists have not hitherto devoted very much attention. The Hamites, who occupy the north-eastern corner of the continent, are supposed by all writers without exception to have come from Asia across the Red Sea. Most authorities have been content with comparatively short periods in estimating the date of this migration—indeed, the most recent work on the subject, Captain Merker’s book on the Masai (whom, by the bye, he claims as Semites) asserts that both date and route can be accurately calculated, and places the former about 5,000 years ago.

Not only for these, moreover, but also for the great mass of the population of Africa, the Sudanese and Bantu negroes, an original home outside the continent is very generally assumed; and both these groups are supposed to have penetrated to their present abodes from Asia, either by way of the Isthmus of Suez, or across the Straits of Bab el Mandeb.

This theory I had the pleasure of combating some years ago. There is absolutely nothing to show that the ancestors of the present negro race ever lived elsewhere than in the region which, in the main, they occupy to-day. No branch of this large group can be shown to have possessed any nautical skill worth mentioning; and none has ever ventured far out to sea.

It may be said that no great knowledge of navigation was needed for crossing the Strait of Bab el Mandeb, even if the migration did not take place by way of the Isthmus. The problem, however, is by no means to be solved in this simple fashion. Modern anthropology demands for human evolution periods as long as for that of the higher animals. Diluvial Man has long since been recognized by our most rigid orthodoxy; and people would have to get used to Tertiary Man, even if the necessities of the case did not make him an indispensable postulate. As the youth of mankind recedes into early geological periods, the problem of race-development is seen to require for its solution not merely measurements of skull and skeleton, but the vigorous cooperation of palæontology and historical geology. So far as I can judge, the sciences in question will probably end by agreeing on three primitive races, the white, black and yellow, each having its centre of development on one of the old primitive continents. Such a continent in fact existed through long geological ages in the Southern Hemisphere. A large fragment of it is represented by modern Africa, smaller ones by Australia and the archipelagoes of Indonesia and Papua. The distribution of the black race from Senegambia in the west to Fiji in the east is thus explained in a way that seems ridiculously easy.

To account for the great groups of mixed races, too, we must for the future, in my opinion, have recourse to the geological changes of the earth’s surface. Whence do we derive the Hamites? and what, after all, do we understand by this term, which, curiously enough, denotes a zone of peoples exactly filling up the geographical gap between the white and black races? Furthermore, how are we to explain the so-called Ural-Altaic race, that mass of peoples so difficult to define, occupying the space between the primitive Mongol element in the East and the Caucasian in the West? Does not, here too, the thought suggest itself that the impulse to the development of both groups—the North African as well as the North Asiatic—came from a long-continued contact between the ancient primitive races which, according to the position of affairs, i.e., judging by the geological changes which have taken place, both in the south-eastern corner of the Mediterranean, and in the east of Northern Europe—was only rendered possible by the junction of the old continents formerly separated by seas? In fact the land connection in both these places is, geologically speaking, very recent.

To come back from dreary theory to cheerful reality, I may mention that I have taken a few successful photographs of Cape Guardafui. From the north this promontory does not look very imposing. The coast seems quite near, but in reality we are five or six miles away from it, and at this distance the cliffs, though nearly a thousand feet high, are reduced to insignificance.

The view from the south is more impressive. Here, on our right, the mountains rise in an almost vertical wall to a height of some 3,000 feet, and often look still higher, when their summits are lost in a compact stratum of cloud. Yet the eye always turns back again and again to the Cape itself. It does not indeed appear more lofty than it did from the north, but from this side it presents, even to the least imaginative observer, the shape known to all travellers as the “Sleeping Lion.” I am not in general particularly impressed by the fancied resemblances which as a rule give rise to the bestowal of similar appellations, but here I was struck by the absolute verisimilitude of this piece of natural sculpture. The mighty maned head lies low, seemingly resting on the dark blue line of the Indian Ocean, the right fore-paw drawn up close to it. But the royal beast’s eyes are closed, and what a splendid piece of symbolism is thus lost to us! As it is, the image presented to-day is a somewhat tame one. In old times, while the lion was awake, he watched over the busy maritime traffic which the later period of antiquity and the early Middle Ages kept up before his eyes, when Phœnicians, Himyarites, Greeks, Romans, Arabs, and Persians sailed eastward and southward, and the mediæval Chinese advanced from the east as far as the Gulf of Aden, and even into the Red Sea. That was a time when it was worth while to keep awake. Then came Islam and the rule of the Turk—and, still later, the circumnavigation of the Cape rendered the Egyptian and Syrian overland routes useless. The Red Sea and the Persian Gulf sank into a stagnation that lasted for centuries—and the Lion grew weary and fell asleep.

Even the enormous traffic brought by the opening of the Suez Canal has not been sufficient to wake him; the world is ruled by vis inertiæ, and a scant forty years is all too short a time for the sounds of life to have penetrated his slumbers. For that, other means will be required.

There is an Italian captain on board, a splendid figure of a man, but suffering sadly from the effects of spear-wounds received from the Abyssinians at Adowa. I asked him the other day why his Government had not placed a lighthouse on Cape Guardafui, which, as rulers of the country they were surely bound to do. He acknowledged that this was so, but pointed out that the attempt to carry out any such project would involve a difficult and expensive campaign against the Somali, who would by no means tamely submit to lose the profits of their trade as wreckers.

No doubt the captain was right, but Italy cannot in the long run refuse to comply with the international obligation of erecting a lighthouse on this exposed spot, where even now may be seen the melancholy black hull of a French steamer, which, coming up the coast on a dark night, took the westerly turn too soon. But from the moment when this lighthouse throws its rays for the first time over the waves of the Indian Ocean, the Lion will awake, and feel that his time has come once more.

The monsoon is a welcome change, after the enervating atmosphere of the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden, but for any length of time its monotony becomes tedious. Hence the loud rejoicing of passengers on sighting Mombasa and Zanzibar and the speed with which they rush on shore at those ports. At Dar es Salam the first freshness has worn off a little, but the traveller nevertheless sets foot on dry land with an indefinable feeling of relief.

LINDI BAY

CHAPTER II
THE UNEXPECTED

Lindi, End of June, 1906.

Africa! Africa! When, in past years, men told me that in Africa it is no use making plans of any sort beforehand, I always looked on this opinion as the quintessence of stupidity; but after my recent experiences I am quite in a position to appreciate its truth.

I must go back to the 11th of June. The two geographers and I had fixed our departure northward for the 20th; after getting together the necessary men and baggage we intended to take the steamer to Tanga, and the Usambara railway from Tanga to Mombo, so as to start from the Pangani Valley on our march across the Masai steppe to Kondoa-Irangi. Our preparations were going on in the most satisfactory manner; and I was one morning doing my best to hasten them in Traun, Stürken and Devers’ stores, by exercising that persistency in bargaining which can only be acquired by the director of an ethnographical museum. I had not been listening to the conversation going on beside me between one of the salesmen and a European officer of the Field Force; but suddenly the name Kondoa-Irangi fell on my ear, and I was all attention on the instant. “I suppose you are going home by the——to-morrow?” said one. “No such luck! we are marching to-morrow afternoon. Didn’t I just say there’s a rising in Iraku?” returned the other.

Kondoa-Irangi and Iraku concerned me closely enough to necessitate farther inquiry. Half instinctively, I flung myself out at the door and into the dazzling sunshine which flooded the street. At that moment Captain Merker’s mule-waggon rattled up, and his voice reached me over the woolly heads of the passers-by. “Stop, Dr. Weule, you can’t go to Kondoa-Irangi.”

Though not in general endowed with presence of mind in any extraordinary degree, I must in this instance have thought with lightning speed, for no sooner had I taken my place beside Merker, in order to proceed without loss of time to the Government offices and ask for fuller explanations, than I had already gone through in my mind the various possible alternatives, in case it turned out—as seemed probable—that I had to give up all thought of the Irangi expedition. In those—to me—critical days at Dar es Salam, there was no one acquainted with the circumstances but would have said, “Get out! the Iraku rising is no rising at all—it is a mere trifle, a quarrel about a couple of oxen, or something of the sort—in any case an affair that will soon be settled.” None the less I had to admit that the Acting Governor (Geheimrat Haber, of whose unfailing kindness I cannot say enough) was right when he pointed out that, while a geographer could traverse that district at his ease, regardless of the four columns of the native Field Force (Schutztruppe) marched into it, along roads converging from Moshi, Mpapwa, Kilimatinde and Tabora respectively, the case was totally different for an ethnographic expedition, which can only do its work in a perfectly undisturbed country. This condition would not be attainable up North for some time to come. Would it not be better to turn southward, to the hinterland of Lindi and Mikindani? True, a rising had taken place there not long ago, but it was now quite over, and the Wamwera, more especially, had got a very effectual thrashing, so that the tribes of that part would be unlikely to feel disposed for fresh aggression just at present. At the same time, a comparatively large force had marched into the South, both Field Force and police, and the most important strategic points were strongly garrisoned, so that I could be certain of getting a sufficient escort; while for the Manyara country I could only reckon on a couple of recruits at the outside.

THE SS. RUFIJI, DRAWN BY BAKARI, A MSWAHILI

My long-continued study of African races never rendered me a better service than now. It can easily be understood that I knew less about the new field of work suggested than about that which had been so rudely snatched from me; but I was aware that it contained a conglomeration of tribes similar to that found in the North; and I was also able to form a fairly definite notion of the way in which I should have to plan and carry out my new expedition, in order to bring it to a successful issue. I refrained, however, from thinking out the new plan in detail—indeed, I should have had no time to do so, for I had to be quick if I did not wish to lose several weeks. The permission of the Geographical Committee and of the Colonial Office was soon secured, my loads were packed; two boys and a cook had been engaged long before. The little Government steamer Rufiji was to start for the South on the 19th of June. I induced the Government to supply me on the spot with the only map of the southern district at that time procurable, and with equal promptitude the admirably-managed “Central-Magazin” had found me two dozen sturdy Wanyamwezi porters. Other absolutely indispensable arrangements were speedily disposed of, and before I had time to look round, I found myself on board and steaming out of Dar es Salam Harbour.

VIEW NEAR THE MOUTH OF THE LUKULEDI ABOVE LINDI

I had never for one moment cherished the illusion that a research expedition was a pleasure-trip, but the three days and a quarter spent on board the Rufiji will remain a vivid memory, even should my experience of the interior prove worse than I anticipate. My own want of foresight is partly to blame for this. Instead of having a good breakfast at the Dar es Salam Club before starting, I allowed the ship’s cook to set before me some coffee, which in combination with the clammy, ill-baked bread and rancid tinned butter would have proved an effectual emetic even on dry land, and soon brought about the inevitable catastrophe on board the little vessel madly rolling and pitching before a stiff south-west monsoon. The Rufiji and her sister ship the Rovuma are not, properly speaking, passenger steamers, but serve only to distribute the mails along the coast and carry small consignments of cargo. Consequently there is no accommodation for travellers, who have to climb the bridge when they come on board, and live, eat, drink, and sleep there till they reach their destination. This is all very well so long as the numbers are strictly limited: there is just room at night for two or three camp beds, an item which has to be brought with you in any case, as without it no travel is possible in East Africa. But the state of things when six or eight men, and perhaps even a lady, have to share this space, which is about equal to that of a moderate-sized room—the imagination dare not picture.

My own woes scarcely permitted me to think about the welfare of my men. Moritz and Kibwana, my two boys and my cook, Omari, are travelled gentlemen who yielded themselves with stoic calm to the motion of the Rufiji, but my Wanyamwezi porters very soon lost their usual imperturbable cheerfulness. They all came on board in the highest spirits, boasting to the kinsmen they left behind at Dar es Salam of the way in which they were going to travel and see the world. How the twenty-four managed to find room in the incredibly close quarters of the after-deck, which they had, moreover, to share with two or three horses, is still a puzzle to me; they were sitting and lying literally on the top of one another. As they were sick the whole time, it must, indeed, have been a delightful passage for all of them.

There is something strangely rigid, immovable and conservative about this old continent. We were reminded of this by the Lion of Cape Guardafui, and now we find it confirmed even by the official regulations of steamer traffic. The ancients, as we know, only sailed by day, and savages, who are not very well skilled in navigation, always moor their sea-going craft off shore in the evening. We Europeans, on the other hand, consider it one of our longest-standing and highest achievements to be independent both of weather and daylight in our voyages. To this rule the Rovuma and Rufiji form one of the rare exceptions; they always seek some sheltered anchorage shortly before sunset, and start again at daybreak the next morning.

On the trip from Dar es Salam to Lindi and Mikindani—the South Tour, as it is officially called—the first harbour for the night is Simba Uranga, one of the numerous mouths of the great Rufiji river. The entrance to this channel is not without charm. At a great distance the eye can perceive a gap in the green wall of mangroves which characterizes the extensive delta. Following the buoys which mark the fairway, the little vessel makes for the gap, not swiftly but steadily. As we approach it opens out—to right and left stretches the white line of breakers, foaming over the coral reefs which skirt the coast of Eastern Equatorial Africa—and, suddenly, one is conscious of having escaped from the open sea and found refuge in a quiet harbour. It is certainly spacious enough—the river flows, calm and majestic, between the green walls of its banks, with a breadth of 600, or even 800 metres, and stretches away into the interior farther than the eye can follow it. The anchorage is about an hour’s steam up river. On the right bank stands a saw-mill, closed some time ago: its forsaken buildings and rusting machinery furnishing a melancholy illustration of the fallacious hopes with which so many Colonial enterprises were started. Just as the sun sinks below the horizon, the screw ceases its work, the anchor-chain rattles through the hawse-holes, and the Rufiji is made fast for the night. Her furnace, which burns wood, is heated with mangrove logs, cut in the forests of the Delta and stacked at this spot ready for transference on board. This work is usually done under the superintendence of a forester, whom I am sorry not to see, he being absent up country. His life may be leisurely, but scarcely enviable; for we are speedily surrounded, even out in mid-stream, by dense clouds of mosquitoes, which, I fancy, will hardly be less abundant on land. The swabbing of the decks on an ocean steamer, in the early morning, just at the time when sleep is sweetest, is represented on the Rufiji by the wooding in the Simba Uranga River, and the shipping of cargo in the open roadstead of Kilwa. In the two nights passed on board, I got very little sleep, between the incessant bumping of loads thrown down on deck, and the equally incessant yelling of the crew. There was little compensation for this, either in the magnificent sunset witnessed on the Simba Uranga, or the wonderfully impressive spectacle we enjoyed when steaming out in the early morning. Nothing could have revived us but the fresh breeze of the monsoon on the open sea. No sooner, however, were we outside than Neptune once more demanded his tribute. I do not know whether a healthy nervous system would have been affected by the Rufiji’s mode of stoking—and if so, how—but to us three sea-sick passengers, who had to share the amenities of the bridge as far as Kilwa, it was simply intolerable. Of the two boats, the Rovuma, at any rate, has a digestion sufficiently robust to grapple with the thirty-inch lengths of mangrove-wood, thrown into her furnaces just as they are. The Rufiji, however, has a more delicate constitution, and can only assimilate food in small pieces. With the first glimmer of daybreak, the heavy hammer, wielded by the strong right arm of a muscular baharia, crashes down on the steel wedge held in position by another native sailor on the first of the mangrove logs. Blow after blow shakes the deck; the tough wood creaks and groans; at last the first morsel has been chopped up for the ravenous boiler, and the fragments describe a lofty parabola in their flight into the tiny engine-room. Then comes another crash which makes the whole boat vibrate,—and so on, hour after hour, throughout the whole day. Not till evening do the men’s arms rest, and our sea-sick brains hail the cessation of work with sincere thankfulness, for the continuous rhythm of the hammer, which seems quite tolerable for the first hour, becomes, in the eleven which follow it, the most atrocious torture.

My black followers behaved exactly as had been foretold to me by those best acquainted with the race. At Dar es Salam each of the twenty-seven had received his posho, i.e., the means of buying rations for four days. At Simba Uranga, the mnyampara (headman) came to me with a request that I should buy more provisions for himself and his twenty-three subordinates, as they had already eaten all they had. The complete lack of purchasable supplies in the forest saved me the necessity of a refusal,—as it also did in the case of Moritz, who, with his refined tastes, insisted on having some fish, and whom, with a calm smile, I projected down the bridge ladder. That is just like these improvident children of the Dark Continent; they live in the present and take no thought for the future—not even for to-morrow morning. Accordingly, I had to spend a few more rupees at Kilwa, in order to quiet these fellows, the edge of whose insatiable appetite had not been blunted by sea-sickness. Kilwa—called Kilwa Kivinje, to distinguish it from Kilwa Kisiwani, the old Portuguese settlement further south,—has sad memories for us, connected with the Arab rising of 1888, when two employees of the German East African Company met with a tragic death through the failure of our fleet to interfere. The officers in command have been severely blamed for this; but to-day, after examining for myself the topography of the place, I find that the whole deplorable business becomes perfectly intelligible. The shallowness of the water off shore is such that European steamers have to anchor a long way out, and the signals of distress shown by the two unfortunate men could not have been seen.

Under normal circumstances three days is a pretty liberal allowance for the run from Dar es Salam to Lindi by the Rufiji; but we did not accomplish it in the time. South of Kilwa we lost the shelter afforded us for the last two days by the island of Mafia and the countless little coral reefs and islets, and consequently felt the full force of the south wind. Being now the only passenger, I had plenty of room, but was if possible more wretched than before, as the supply of oranges—the only thing I felt the slightest inclination to eat—was exhausted. Soon after midday the captain and mate began to study the chart with anxious looks.

“When shall we get to Lindi?” I asked wearily, from the depths of my long chair.

An evasive answer. The afternoon wore on, and the view to starboard: a white, curling line of breakers, backed by the wall of mangroves with their peculiar green, still remained the same. The captain and mate were still bending over their chart when the sun was nearing the horizon.

LINDI ROADSTEAD

“Is that headland Cape Banura?” I asked, thinking that we were on the point of entering Lindi Bay, which once seen can never be mistaken.

Another evasive answer made it quite clear to me that our two navigators could not be very familiar with this part of the coast. In fact the captain was quite a new-comer, and the mate was acting temporarily in the place of a man on leave. As the sun was now fast setting, we ran into the first convenient inlet, passed a quiet night there, and did the last three or four hours to Lindi on the fourth day, without further incident. Our harbour of refuge was Mchinga Bay, which was unknown to the two seamen and to me—though not, as afterwards appeared, to the two engineers. Unluckily it happened—as it always does when our countrymen are cooped up together in a small space for any length of time—that there was an implacable feud between the after-deck and the engine-room, and the latter had not thought fit to enlighten the former as to the ship’s position.

There is something solemn and awe-inspiring about the entrance to Lindi Bay. As the vessel rounds Cape Banura, a mighty basin, perhaps nine miles by three, spreads itself out before us. The green hills surrounding it are not high, but yet by no means insignificant, and they fall away in steep declivities to the sea, especially on the south side. The Rufiji looks a black speck on this glittering silvery expanse. The little town of Lindi lies picturesquely enough among groves of coco-palms and Casuarina, on a tongue of land formed by the shore at the back of the rectangular bay and the left bank of a seemingly vast river, which we can see penetrating into the country behind Lindi. The geographer knows, however, that this mighty channel—from 800 to 1,200 yards broad—represents the estuary of the tiny Lukuledi, which at the present day could not possibly fill such a bed. What we look upon as its mouth is really the whole valley of a much older Lukuledi, now sunk beneath the level of the Indian Ocean. All our harbours on this coast have originated in the same way:—Dar es Salam, Kilwa Kisiwani, Lindi and Mikindani are all flooded river-valleys. Africa with its unwieldy mass looks dull enough, I admit, on the map; but examined at close quarters the continent is interesting in all its parts, as we find even before we have landed on its shores.

ARAB DHOW. DRAWN BY STAMBURI, A SOLDIER BELONGING TO THE AWEMBA TRIBE

CHAIN-GANG. DRAWN BY SALIM MATOLA, A MNYASA

CHAPTER III
APPRENTICESHIP

Lindi, July 9, 1906.

Africa is the land of patience. All my predecessors had ample opportunity for acquiring and exercising that virtue, and it seems that I am not to be spared the necessary trials. After being nearly three weeks inactive at Dar es Salam, to be detained for about the same period in another coast town is rather too much, especially when the time for the whole journey is so limited, and the best part of the year—the beginning of the dry season—is passing all too quickly.

At Dar es Salam the paucity of steamer communication furnished the reason for delay, while here at Lindi it is the absence of the District Commissioner and the consequent lack of available police. The authorities will not hear of my starting without an armed escort, but soldiers are only to be had when Mr. Ewerbeck returns, so that I am compelled, whether I like it or not, to await his arrival. Not that I have found the waiting wearisome, either here or at Dar es Salam. The latter place, with its varied population and numerous European residents, would be novel and striking enough to attract the mere tourist, while, for my own part, I had an additional interest in the preparation for my future work. This consisted in seeing as much of the natives as time permitted. Many a morning and afternoon have I spent in their huts or yards, and succeeded in securing some good phonographic records of the songs sung at ngoma dances, besides numerous solos and melodies played by members of various tribes on their national instruments. On one occasion, indeed, the officials very kindly got up a dance expressly for my convenience. Unfortunately all the cinematograph negatives I took on that occasion were either blurred by shaking or over-exposed, so that we had to be content with some tolerable photographs of the peculiar dances, and the excellent phonographic records of the songs. Of the dances and their accompaniments I shall have more to say later.

WOMEN’S DANCE AT DAR ES SALAM

My stay at Lindi has passed off less peacefully and agreeably than I had hoped. A day or two after landing here, I had to witness the execution of a rebel. Such a function can never be a pleasure to the chief performer, however callous; but if, after the reading of the long sentence in German and then in Swahili, the proceedings are lengthened by such bungling in the arrangements as was here the case, it can be nothing less than torture even to the most apathetic black. It is true that, as a precautionary measure, a second rope had been attached to the strong horizontal branch of the great tree which serves as a gallows at Lindi; but when the condemned man had reached the platform it appeared that neither of the two was long enough to reach his neck. The stoical calm with which the poor wretch awaited the dragging up of a ladder and the lengthening of one of the ropes was extremely significant as an illustration of native character, and the slight value these people set on their own lives.

Lindi forms a contrast to many other Coast towns, in that its interior keeps the promise of the first view from outside. It is true that the long winding street in which the Indians have their shops is just as ugly—though not without picturesque touches here and there—as the corresponding quarters in Mombasa, Tanga and Dar es Salam; but in the other parts of the straggling little town, the native huts are all embowered in the freshest of green. Two elements predominate in the life of the streets—the askari and the chain-gang—both being closely connected with the rising which is just over. The greater part of Company No. 3 of the Field Force is, it is true, just now stationed at strategic points in the interior—at Luagala on the Makonde Plateau, and at Ruangwa, the former seat of Sultan Seliman Mamba, far back in the Wamwera country. In spite of this, however, there is enough khaki left to keep up the numbers of the garrison. This colour is most conspicuous in the streets in connection with the numerous chain-gangs, each guarded by a soldier in front and another in the rear, which are to be met with everywhere in the neighbourhood of the old police Boma and the new barracks of the Field Force. I realize now what nonsense has been talked in the Reichstag about the barbarity of this method of punishment, and how superficial was the knowledge of the negro’s psychology and his sense of justice shown by the majority of the speakers. Though competent writers—men who, through a long residence in the country, have become thoroughly familiar with the people and their character—have again and again pointed out that mere imprisonment is no punishment for the black, but rather a direct recognition of the importance of his offence, their words have fallen on deaf ears. We Germans cannot get away from our stereotyped conceptions, and persist in meting out the same treatment to races so different in character and habit as black and white. Of course I do not mean to imply that a man can under any circumstances be comfortable when chained to a dozen fellow-sufferers (even though the chain, running through a large ring on one side of the neck, allows each one a certain freedom of movement), if only on account of the difficulties involved in the satisfaction of natural necessities. But then people are not sent to the chain-gang in order to be comfortable.

SELIMAN MAMBA

However, men guilty of particularly heinous crimes and those of prominent social position enjoy the distinction of solitary confinement. In the conversation of the few Europeans just now resident at Lindi, the name of Seliman Mamba is of frequent occurrence. This man was the leader of the rising in the coast region, but was ultimately captured, and is now awaiting in the Lindi hospital the execution of the sentence recently pronounced on him. As he has a number of human lives, including those of several Europeans on his conscience, he no doubt deserves his fate. As a historical personage who will probably long survive in the annals of our Colony, I considered Seliman Mamba worthy of having his features handed down to posterity, and therefore photographed him one day in the hospital compound. The man was obviously ill, and could only carry his heavy chain with the greatest difficulty. His execution, when it takes place, as it shortly must, will be a release in every sense of the word.

By far more agreeable than these “echoes of rebellion” are the results of my scientific inquiries among my own men and the Swahilis. My Wanyamwezi seem quite unable to endure inaction, and ever since our second day at Lindi, they have been besieging me from early morning till late at night with mute or even vocal entreaties to give them something to do. This request I granted with the greatest pleasure,—I made them draw to their heart’s content, and allowed them to sing into the phonograph as often as opportunity offered. I have already discovered one satisfactory result from our adventurous and—in one sense calamitous—voyage in the Rufiji. My men have wrought their sufferings, and their consequent treatment at the hands of the crew into a song which they now delight in singing with much energy and a really pleasing delivery. Here it is:—[^[4]]

The general drift of it is something like the following:—“We were on board day and night, till the day dawned, and then cast anchor. The Baharia (sailors) on board said, ‘You Washenzi (pagans, bush people) from the interior, you will vomit yourselves to death.’ But we came safe to Lindi after all, and said (to the sailors): ‘You mocked at God (by saying that we should die), but we came safe to land.’”

This love of singing is characteristic of the Wanyamwezi. In the course of my enforced detention here, I have taken many a photographic stroll, in which my men are always eager to accompany me. On these occasions I have to divide the small amount of apparatus necessary to be taken with me among as many of them as possible, so that everyone may have something to carry. It is never very long before Pesa mbili the Mnyampara or caravan headman, lifts up his voice—a very good one too—whereupon the chorus promptly falls in in excellent time. I may here give a specimen of these little marching songs:—

Kabowe kabowe ku meso; Namuki kabowe ku meso. (1)

Wambunga kabowe ku meso; Namuki kabowe ku meso.

Ki! kabowe ku meso; Wamwera kabowe ku meso.

Ki! kabowe ku meso; Wakumbwa kabowe ku meso.

(1) We shoot with our eyes—we shoot the Namuki with our eyes,

The Wambunga, we shoot them with our eyes—the Namuki, we shoot them with our eyes;

Bang! we shoot with our eyes—the Wamwera, we shoot them with our eyes;

Bang! we shoot with our eyes—the Wakumbwa—we shoot them with our eyes.

To judge by the words of this song, the Wanyamwezi must be exceedingly loyal to the German Government, for they march against all the rebellious southern tribes in turn and annihilate them. The Namuki are identical with the Majimaji, the insurgents of 1905–6. The time is a frantic recitative which makes a reproduction in our notation impossible. The exclamation “ki” conveys, according to the unanimous testimony of Pesa mbili and the most intelligent among his friends, the expression of the force with which the Rugaruga (the auxiliaries) smash the skulls of the wounded enemy, even though it should have to be done with a stamp of the heel. At every repetition of the ki the singers stamp on the ground so that it quivers—so completely can these peaceable Northerners throw themselves into all the horrors of the late rising; one can almost hear the skulls crash at every ki. This song of defiance is certainly not an original composition of my people’s, but has been borrowed by them from some of their tribesmen who served in the last campaign as Rugaruga and are now lounging about Lindi out of work. I have been obliged to engage some of these men as carriers for the march to Masasi; they are in their whole behaviour much more decided and defiant than my gentle grown-up children from Dar es Salam, so that I shall be glad to get rid of them when my destination is reached. I think the above song must belong to them.

Now that I am on the subject I will reproduce a march of the Sudanese soldiers which in its meaning closely resembles the one just given. This was sung into the phonograph for me by Sol (Sergeant-Major) Achmed Bar Shemba and a couple of divisions from the third company of the Field Force by order of that excellent African veteran, Captain Seyfried. The little non-com. stood like a bronze statue in front of the machine, and the gaunt brown warriors from Darfur and Kordofan closed up behind him, as if they had been on the drill-ground, in two ranks, each man accurately behind the one in front. We had no little trouble in making them take up the wedge formation necessary to produce the desired effect. The song runs thus:—

YAO WOMEN AT MTUA

The singers, who are principally Nubians, state that this song is in their mother tongue, the Darfur dialect. I have not yet succeeded in obtaining a literal translation. The general meaning of the words, which are sung with enviable lung-power and indefatigable energy, is somewhat as follows:

“We are always strong. The Jumbe (headman) has been hanged by the command of Allah. Hongo (one of the insurgent leaders) has been hanged by the command of Allah.”

Thus much as to the results of my musical inquiries so far as they concern the foreign elements (foreign, that is to say, here at Lindi) of the Wanyamwezi and Nubians. I have obtained some records of ngoma songs from Yaos and other members of inland tribes, but I cannot tell for the present whether they are a success, as I find to my consternation that my cylinders are softening under the influence of the damp heat, so that I can take records, but cannot risk reproducing them for fear of endangering the whole surface. A cheerful prospect for the future!

Very interesting from a psychological point of view is the behaviour of the natives in presence of my various apparatus. The camera is, at any rate on the coast, no longer a novelty, so that its use presents comparatively few difficulties, and the natives are not particularly surprised at the results of the process. The only drawback is that the women—as we found even at Dar es Salam—usually escape being photographed by running away as fast as their legs will carry them. The cinematograph is a thing utterly outside their comprehension. It is an enchini, a machine, like any other which the mzungu, the white man, has brought into the country—and when the said white turns a handle on the little black box, counting at the same time, in a monotonous rhythm, “Twenty-one, twenty-two, twenty-one, twenty-two,” the native may be pleasantly reminded of the droning measures which he is accustomed to chant at his work; but what is to be the result of the whole process he neither knows nor cares.

GIRLS FROM LINDI

The phonograph, on the contrary, is an enchini after the very heart, not only of the black man, but even of the black woman. If I should live to the age of Methuselah the scene in Mr. Devers’s compound at Dar es Salam will always remain one of the most delightful recollections connected with my stay in Africa. After spending some time in the native quarter, watching the dances of various tribes—here a Manyema ngoma, there one of the Wazaramo, or yonder again that of some coast people’s club, and observing the costumes of the performers, sometimes hideous but always picturesque, I returned to my own quarters, at the head of a procession numbering some hundreds of the dancers, male and female, in order to take down the audible part of the proceedings. Everything had gone off in the most satisfactory way; but every time I changed the diaphragms, took out the recorder and put in the reproducer, when the full-voiced melody poured forth from the mysterious funnel in exactly the same time and with the precise timbre which had been sung into it—what measureless and at the same time joyful astonishment was painted on the brown faces, all moist and shining with their exertions in singing and dancing! Whenever this happened, all the more unsophisticated souls joined in the chorus, to be speedily enlightened by the derisive laughter of the more “educated” element.

But the most delightful instance of naiveté came at the close of the proceedings, after I had used up my small stock of Swahili idioms in expressing my pleasure at a successful afternoon. Two women, who had previously attracted my notice by their tremendous vocal power, as well as by the elegance of their attire, came forward again; and, as the crowd fell back, leaving a clear space in front of the phonograph, first one and then the other approached the apparatus, dropped a curtsy in the finest Court style, and waving her hand towards the mouthpiece said, “Kwa heri, sauti yangu!”—“Good-bye, my voice!” This incident illustrates the way in which the native mind cannot get away from what is most immediately obvious to the senses. In the very act of uttering their farewell, these two women could hear for themselves that they had not lost their voices in the least, and yet because they had a moment ago, heard them distinctly coming out of the phonograph, they regarded themselves as deprived of them from that instant, and solemnly took leave of them.

As to my inquiries into the artistic aptitudes of the natives, I prefer to give the results in a connected form later on, when I shall have brought together a larger amount of material on which to form a judgment. So much, however, I can say even now: c’est le premier pas qui coûte is true, not only for the executant artist but also for the investigator. At Dar es Salam, the matter was simpler. My “boy” Kibwana (literally, “the Little Master”), a youth of the Wazegeju tribe from Pangani, though, like Omari the cook (a Bondei from the north of the colony), he had never had a pencil or a piece of paper in his hand before, had been too long in the service of Europeans to venture any objections when desired to draw something for me—say the palm in front of my window, or my piece of India-rubber. He set to work, and cheerfully drew away, with no anxieties as to the artistic value to be expected from the result.

In the case of my Wanyamwezi, with whom I have made a beginning here, in order to give them something to do, a mere order is of little use. If I put a sketch-book and pencil into the hands of one of my followers with the invitation to draw something, the inevitable answer is a perplexed smile and an embarrassed “Sijui, bwani”—“I don’t know how, sir.” Then one has to treat the man according to his individuality—with an energetic order, or a gentle request; but in every case I found that the best plan was to approach him on the side of his ambition. “Why, you’re a clever fellow, you know—a mwenyi akili—just look at your friend Juma over there—he is not nearly as clever as you—and yet, see how he can draw! Just sit down here and begin drawing Juma himself!” This subtle flattery proved irresistible to all but a few, who, despite everything I could say by way of encouragement, stuck to it that they could not do what was wanted. The rest are like the lion who has once tasted blood: they are insatiable, and if I had brought two dozen sketch-books with me, they would all be continuously in use. I found that, instead of leaving the beginner to choose his own subject, it was a better plan (as it is also educationally a sounder one) to suggest in the first instance something quite familiar—a Nyamwezi hut, a fowl, a snake, or the like. Then one finds that they set to work with some confidence in themselves, and that they are inordinately proud of their masterpieces, if their mzungu gives them the smallest word of praise. It is obvious that I should never dream of finding fault—my object being, not criticism with a view to improvement, but merely the study of the racial aptitudes and the psychological processes involved in artistic production.

RUINED TOWER, LINDI (BUILT BY THE PORTUGUESE)

My way of getting at the latter is to stipulate that each of my draughtsmen, as soon as he feels that his degree of proficiency entitles him to a reward, is to show me his work. Then comes a shauri[^[5]] usually of long duration, but extremely amusing for both parties. “What is this?” I ask, pointing with my pencil to what looks a perplexing complication of lines. “Mamba—a crocodile,” comes the answer, either with a slight undertone of indignant astonishment at the European who does not even know a crocodile when he sees it, or somewhat dejectedly on finding the work to be so unsuccessful that even the omniscient mzungu cannot tell what it is meant for. “Oh! a crocodile—very good!” I reply, and write the word beside the drawing. “Yes,” the artist never fails to add, “but it is a mamba of Unyamwezi,” or “of Usagara,” or “in the Ngerengere,” as the case may be. One is brought up short by this information, and asks, “Why? How so?” and then comes a long story in explanation. This is a crocodile which the artist and his friends (here follow their names in full), saw on the march from Tabora to the coast with such and such a European, and which came very near being the death of him at the crossing of such and such a swamp, or of the Ngerengere river. When writing down the first few of these commentaries, I did not pay any special attention to the fact of their always being connected with a particular incident; but now, after having acquired a large collection of drawings representing either single objects (animals, plants, implements, etc.), or scenes from native life, it has become clear to me that the African is incapable of drawing any object in the abstract, so to speak, and apart from its natural surroundings—or indeed from some particular surroundings in which he has met with it on some particular occasion. If he is told to draw a Mnyamwezi woman he draws his own wife, or at any rate some relative or personal acquaintance, and if he is to draw a hut, he proceeds in exactly the same way, and depicts his own or his neighbour’s. Just so with the genre pictures, which are not such in our sense of the word, but might almost be termed a species of historical painting. I have already a whole series of sketches representing a lion springing on a cow, or a hyæna attacking a man, or some similar scene from the life-struggle of the higher organisms, and the explanation is always something like this:—“This is a lion, and this is a cow, but the cow belonged to my uncle and the lion carried it off about four years ago. And this is a hyæna, and this man is my friend—say, Kasona—who was taken ill on the march from Tabora to Mwanza and had to stay behind, and the hyæna came and was going to bite him, but we drove it away and saved Kasona.”

These are only one or two specimens of my methods and results. I am convinced that I am on the right tack, though no doubt I shall make many mistakes and need much additional experience.

My dynamometer, which did such excellent service on board the Red Sea steamer in promoting friendly international relations, has not lost its virtue here. When I am at the end of my resources for amusing my men and the friends whom they have gathered round them since our arrival in Lindi, I put the steel oval into the hand of honest Pesa mbili, who, of course, must have the precedence in everything. He presses it, and then, with the whole troop of his black friends crowding round, gazes with the greatest excitement at the dial, as if he could read the mysterious signs engraved on the brass arc. When I have glanced at the scale and announced the result—of course the numbers only, as the kilogrammes would merely serve to perplex them—it is received with a certain quite comprehensible feeling of doubt; they do not yet know if the number means much or little, having no standard of comparison. The second man begins to excite interest; if, instead of his predecessor’s 35 kilogrammes, he can only reach 30, he is greeted by mildly derisive laughter, but if he excels his rival, he is a mwenyi nguvu—a strong man, worthy of the tribute of admiration which he receives with smiling dignity.

So each man takes his turn, and they will go on for hours without tiring. One thing only is felt by the more intelligent to be wanting—it interests them to know which among themselves is the strongest or weakest, but in order to get a higher and absolute standard of comparison, they are all eagerness to know what their lord and master can do. Of course I am willing to oblige them, at the close of the meeting, and press the instrument, first in my right hand and then in my left. When they hear the result (which, to my great satisfaction, requires no cooking), a unanimous “A-ah! bwana mkubwa!” bursts from the admiring circle—literally, “Ah! Great master!”—but about equivalent to, “What a giant you are for strength!”

UNDER THE PALMS

In fact we Europeans, as far as the spontaneous putting forth of strength goes, are as giants compared with the African. I made fairly careful records of the figures for each man, not once only, but in several successive trials, so that no allowance need be made for novelty or want of practice, but how inferior they are to us! None of them could compass a greater pressure than 35 kilos with the right hand and 26 with the left, with the exception of one man who attained to something over 40 kilos; while I, even here in the damp heat of the coast region can still manage over 60 with the right and over 50 with the left. And yet nearly all my men are professional carriers, sturdy fellows with tremendous chest-measurement, broad shoulders and splendidly developed upper arm muscles. What they lack, as has so often been pointed out, is the power of concentrating the strength of the whole body at a given moment of time. These very Wanyamwezi are famous for their almost incredible powers of endurance.

The natives thus, as a whole, indisputably present a picture not without attractions from a psychological point of view; but in the six weeks or so which I have by this time spent on the coast, the Europeans have appeared to me almost more interesting still. Dar es Salam is so large and contains so many of our race that the new-comer does not have the contrasts between black and white forced on his notice, while the contrasts to be found among the white population are less observable on the wider field of a large settlement. Lindi, being very much smaller, leaves no room for either possibility; in the narrowness of its environment and the monotony of its life, there is nothing to modify the shock of contrasted and clashing individualities, and in such a place one sees with startling clearness the enormously powerful and rapid effect of residence in the tropics on the mental balance of a foreign race. It does not belong to my office to point to the—to say the least of it, curious—excrescences of our German class and caste spirit, which here, in a circle of Europeans numbering a dozen or less, brings forth singularly unpleasant fruits. I need not relate how the military element, recently “dethroned” by the establishment of a civil administration, looks down with a superior smile on the officials of that administration, or how the intrusion of the personal element into affairs cuts off every possibility of social intercourse, and, what is worse, of cordial cooperation in common work. To the new-comer, expressing his astonishment at such a state of things, old residents say (with a coolness contrasting strangely with their usual state of chronic irritation): “What do you expect?—this is not the only place where things are so—you will find it the same everywhere!” So it seems to be, if I may judge by all I have heard during these instructive weeks; but one may hope that this disagreeable phenomenon is only one of the many infantile diseases incidental to the early stages in the life of every colony. One thing, however, which I absolutely fail to understand is the furious fits of rage to which every white man who has lived long in the country appears to be subject. I am doing my best in the meantime to go on my way without calling of names or boxing of ears, but everyone is agreed in assuring me that I shall learn better in the course of the next few months. I cannot judge for the present whether life is really impossible without thrashing people—but I hope it is not the case.

In order not to dwell exclusively on the darker traits characteristic of Europeans in the tropics, I must mention the admirable gifts of household management possessed by most of them. Dar es Salam is so far a centre of civilization as to possess bakers, butchers, and shops of all kinds in plenty, yet even there I fancy that the office of mess president is by no means a sinecure. But who shall describe how the unlucky bachelor in a remote coast town has to rack his brains in order to set before his messmates—not merely something new, but anything at all! Only experience can teach how far in advance one has to provide for all the thousand-and-one trifles which are inseparable from our housekeeping. The price alone makes it impossible to depend to any great extent on tinned goods, and it becomes necessary to have sufficient stores on hand to last for days—sometimes for weeks and months, and, in addition, to concoct eatable dishes out of the wild herbs which the cook and kitchen-boy bring in. On the coast some variety is secured by the abundance of good fish; in the interior this resource fails. And when it happens—as it does just now—that even the standard typical bird of Africa, the domestic fowl, and its product, the egg, are not to be had, then the case is desperate indeed, and catering for a large number of people becomes a serious problem.

It is remarkable, however, how skilled even the most inveterate bachelors among the German residents are in solving this problem—not always with elegance, and certainly not always to the satisfaction of their critical predecessors in office, but yet so as to fill the novice at any rate with astonished admiration. Dr. Franz Stuhlmann, who accompanied Emin Pasha on his last disastrous journey—a thoroughly competent ethnographer and the guardian and cherisher of the African plant-world, so far as it can be adapted to the service of man—has long been a celebrity in the culinary department throughout the whole Colony. Stuhlmann has the reputation of being able to prepare a dainty dish from every weed that grows beside the native path; he is a walking encyclopædia of tropical cookery. Others are less proficient than this, but I cannot yet get over my astonishment at the way in which Captain Seyfried, for instance, can produce something eatable out of the most elementary ingredients, at his achievements in salting and pickling, at the unimpeachable jellies he contrives to serve up even at the present temperature, and at the variety which always characterizes his bill of fare.

I must here make an end, once for all, of one fallacy prevalent at home. “Why, you surely cannot eat anything in that heat!” is a remark which never fails to occur in any conversation having the tropics for its subject, but which betrays a complete misconception of the conditions. In the first place, the heat is not so unendurable as commonly supposed by us—at any rate during the dry season, on the coast, where a fresh sea-breeze always blows by day. But, in addition to this, the waste of tissue goes on much more rapidly in tropical than in temperate climates. Not even the new-comer is surprised to see “old Africans” consuming an extensive “first breakfast” at a very early hour, in which various preparations of meat figure, though fruit is also conspicuous. At midday even a minor official never thinks of less than two courses and dessert, and in the evening after office hours, all ranks and professions go in for a repast which at home would certainly rank as a public banquet. This seemingly luxurious mode of life, however, by no means deserves the reprehension one may feel inclined to bestow on it. On the contrary, it is physiologically both justifiable and necessary, if the body is to offer permanent resistance to the deleterious influence of the climate. The new-comer is not surprised by the appetite of others because, unconsciously, he shares it. Personally, though I wield quite a creditable knife and fork at home, my performances out here would make me the terror of most German housewives.

The only article of diet I do not get on with is alcohol. At home I can appreciate a glass of beer or wine, and on board the Prinzregent we passengers levied a pretty heavy toll on the supplies of “Münchener” and “Pilsener”; but since I landed in this country I have taken no beer at all and wine only in very small quantities, while I have been quite unable to acquire a taste for whisky and soda, the national drink of all Germans in East Africa. Such abstinence is easily understood at Lindi, where there is no ice to be had; but even at Dar es Salam, where Schultz’s brewery supplies the whole town with ice every day, I found I had no taste for alcoholic beverages. This is a great advantage as regards my journey into the interior, as I am saved the inconvenience of taking loads of bottles with me.

I am glad to say that my enforced detention on the coast is nearing its end. Commissioner Ewerbeck, who returned from the interior a few days ago, is most kindly willing to start again with me to-morrow, so as to escort me with a detachment of police through the Wamwera country—the scene of the late rising—as far as Masasi. He has still work to do in the Central Lukuledi Valley, for, though most of the insurgent leaders have long ago been captured and adorn the streets of Lindi in the shape of chain-gangs, the pursuit of others is still going on and will yet cost many a shauri. From Masasi, Mr. Ewerbeck will have to return immediately to Lindi, in time for the formal reception of the delegates from the Reichstag, who are to visit the south of the Colony next month, on their much-discussed tour through East Africa.

My first glimpse of the interior, by the bye, has hardly been a pleasant one. In the course of the riding-lessons which Captain Seyfried has been giving me, we one evening made an excursion to the Kitulo. This is a long, fairly precipitous range of heights, about 570 feet above sea-level, rising immediately behind Lindi and separating the narrow sandy plain on which the town stands from the back country. A landmark of our civilization—a tower built for the sake of the view—was, some years ago, erected on the top of this Kitulo. When I ascended it by the help of a somewhat decrepit ladder, the sun had already set, and the whole western landscape—precisely the part of the Dark Continent which I wish to penetrate within the next few days—lay extended before me as a dark, menacing shadow. For one moment my mind was clouded by gloomy forebodings, but I speedily recalled my old luck which has never yet forsaken me. “Never mind—I’ll get the better of you yet!” I exclaimed, sotto voce, as I lit a new cigar with the utmost philosophy, and mounted my mule for the return journey.

THE LIKWATA DANCE BEING PHOTOGRAPHED BY THE AUTHOR. DRAWN BY PESA MBILI, THE MNYAMWEZI HEADMAN

CHAPTER IV
FIRST IMPRESSIONS OF THE INTERIOR

Masasi, July 20, 1906.

Few people, I fancy, will know where Masasi is, yet those interested in the Colonies might well be acquainted with its situation, for in its own small way it is quite a civilizing centre. The English Mission[^[6]] has been at work here for nearly the third of a century, and, since the suppression of the rebellion, a native corporal with a dozen black German soldiers has been gallantly maintaining his ground, in a boma specially built for the purpose, in case of any renewed warlike impulses on the part of the interior tribes.

I preferred to take up my quarters with the soldiers, not from any hostility to religion, but because the two clergymen at the mission station, about an hour’s walk from us, are both advanced in years, and it would be unfair to trouble them with visitors. Besides their station was burnt down during the rebellion, so that they are leading for the moment a more idyllic than agreeable life in their former cattle-shed. In spite of this, the two old gentlemen, as I had every opportunity of convincing myself in the course of two long visits, enjoy extraordinarily good health. Archdeacon Carnon, the younger of the two, in particular, took as lively an interest in the German Emperor and his family as if he lived in a London suburb, instead of in a negro village at the ends of the earth. Canon Porter seems to be failing a little, but this is only to be expected as he is getting on for eighty and has been in the country nearly thirty years.[^[7]] In former days I understand that he studied the ethnology of his district (inhabited by Wanyasa, Wayao, and Wamakonde) very thoroughly, so that up to yesterday I had great hopes of profitable results from my intercourse with him and his more active colleague. But in this I was disappointed. At the ceremonious, and, I must say, sumptuous breakfast which the two clerical gentlemen set before us two worldlings, Ewerbeck and me, whenever I began to speak about the inhabitants of the neighbourhood and their tribal affinities, the conversation was invariably diverted towards the Emperor and his family! He must have made a truly extraordinary impression on other nations.

However, our business is with the native African, not with the white intruder, even though he should come in the peaceful guise of the missionary.

My landing at Lindi of itself implied the main course of my journey. A glance at the map of East Africa shows that the extreme south-eastern corner of our colony, considered with regard to population, stands out like an island from the almost uninhabited country surrounding it. The region north of the Middle, and partly also of the Upper Rovuma is (as Lieder, the geologist, whose early death is such a loss to science, described it) a silent pori for hundreds of miles, extending far beyond the Umbekuru and into the hinterland of Kilwa—an uninhabited wilderness, where not a single native village speaks of the large and peaceable population found here by Roscher, Livingstone and Von Der Decken nearly half-a-century ago. Only a narrow strip running parallel to the coast some distance inland connects this island of population with the north, while another, much more scantily peopled, runs up the Rovuma to the Nyasa country.

MAKUA WOMEN FROM THE LUKULEDI VALLEY

A MAN OF THE MWERA TRIBE AND A YAO

Being thus cut off from surrounding tribes, the south-east—i.e., the Makonde Plateau, the Lukuledi Valley north of it, and the wide plain to the west of these highlands—forms a compact, well-defined whole, an ideal sphere of work for one who, like myself, has only a limited time at his disposal, but wishes the work done in this time to be as far as possible complete. The Wamwera, whom I had in view in the first instance, have had, to my great regret, to be postponed for the present. I left Lindi on July 11th, with the Imperial District Commissioner, Mr. Ewerbeck. Ngurumahamba, the first noticeable place on the Lukuledi road, still bears the impress of the Coast—there is even a stone house among the huts of the Waswahili; but on the second day we reach the Yao tribe at Mtua. Here we first come in touch with the far interior, for these are the advance guard of the great migration which brought this vigorous and energetic race about the middle of the last century from its old home south-east of Lake Nyasa towards the shores of the Indian Ocean, and which is still going on. As to the way in which these migrations are accomplished, we are apt to be misled by the picture—no doubt a very incorrect one—which has remained in our minds from our school-days, in connection with the migration par excellence—the great westward movement of our own forefathers. We think of men, horses, and waggons, a dense, compact wave of people, rolling on slowly but irresistibly across the countries lying in its track. Here we find nothing of the sort. It is true that these Mtua Yaos are not typical of their tribe in this respect, as they were rescued from the Wangoni, further north, on the eastern shore of Nyasa, about ten years ago by Captain Engelhardt, and transferred to this settlement. But otherwise the immigration of foreign (though still African) elements takes place, here in the south, quietly and almost imperceptibly—a band, a horde, a group of families, sometimes, but not always, under the command of a chief, appears one fine day, hoes a piece of land at a suitable place in the pori, builds a few airy huts, and the immigration is complete. Conflicts, more or less sanguinary, between the aborigines and the intruders may have occurred—may even have been the rule—in former times; nothing of the kind seems to happen to-day. Whether the native has become more tolerant, or the firm hand of the German Government, to whom every accession of population must be welcome, has produced a change in his views, I am compelled to leave undecided.

In outward appearance these Yaos can scarcely be distinguished from the Swahilis of the coast. The women are dressed in precisely the same kind of kanga (calico printed in brightly-coloured patterns, and manufactured in Holland), as the Coast women, though not so neatly and fashionably as the girls at Dar es Salam, where the patterns in vogue change faster than even at Paris. They also wear the same coquettish little pin in the left nostril as the Coast ladies. Of Indian origin, this kipini, called chipini in Yao, has conquered the whole east coast of Africa, and is spreading, as a symbol of higher culture and refinement, among the more progressive tribes of the interior. In its simplest form a mere cylinder of pith, the better specimens are made—according to the means of the wearer—of ebony, tin, or silver. The ebony pins are almost always very tastefully inlaid with tin. To our notions, the chipini hardly beautifies the human countenance; but once the beholder is accustomed to its effect, it becomes quite pretty and attractive, lending a coquettish touch to the brown face it adorns.

RUINS OF NYANGAO MISSION STATION

The more distant hinterland inhabited by the Wamwera contrasts very unfavourably with the well-cultivated zone near the coast. The condition of Nyangao, the Benedictine Mission station, is a symptom of all the misery which the rebellion so short-sightedly conjured up by the natives has brought on this part of Africa. Up to the summer of 1905, the Fathers and Sisters here were peacefully engaged in their work of evangelizing and teaching, when the poison of the majimaji (magic water) idea spread to the Rondo Plateau and the central Lukuledi Valley. Before the unsuspicious missionaries had even any thought of coming disaster, it was already upon them. After fighting desperately for their lives, and losing one of the Sisters, the whole staff had to fly, and all the extensive buildings were destroyed by the rebels. The present state of Nyangao is shown in the accompanying photograph. Three of the Fathers (whose acquaintance I had the pleasure of making on board the Prinzregent), have ventured back to their old station, and, living in the house formerly occupied by the Sisters, surrounded by heaps of ruins, have courageously and indefatigably taken up their work once more.

The Majimaji rebellion still forms the principal topic of conversation at native camp-fires, though the Lindi District has long been at peace again. Its origin belongs to the most interesting phenomena in military history, showing, as it does, the general and almost instantaneous amalgamation of the severed fragments of a race under the influence of a superstitious notion, once it has gained a hold and welded them into a unit animated by a common and fervid enthusiasm. So far as one can gather at present, the idea underlying the rising was that of shaking off the white man’s yoke by means of a concerted effort on the part of the whole native population. Without dawa, i.e., charms of some sort, such a rising would have been difficult, if not impossible to bring about, and thus the instigators of this disastrous war had recourse to the dawa of the “magic water.” As to this, several versions are current. According to one, the real ringleader was a man living near the Pangani Rapids on the Rufiji, who taught that he was commissioned by the Almighty, and communicated with Him by means of a serpent which had its abode in the river. This serpent had told him to make all the men drink the water of the hot springs at Kimambare, which would give them strength and courage to drive the Germans into the sea, and at the same time render them invulnerable to European bullets.

The other version current in Usagara, in the north of the Colony, says nothing of the serpent or the hot water, but states that the sorcerers began by ordering large beer-drinkings in every village. When the pombe had produced its effect, the villagers were initiated into the conspiracy, and received their dawa, of whose composition no details are given, but which, in this case also, was supposed to possess the power of making them invulnerable, so that the bullets of the Germans would simply be changed into water as soon as they left the rifle-barrel. The Majimaji soon discovered, in the course of numerous battles that this was not the case, but nevertheless, the fanaticism of these natives, who, under a murderous fire, charged up to within a spear’s length of the machine-guns—the bumbum, as they call them—is truly astonishing.

From the coast to a little beyond Nyangao the character of the vegetation is essentially different from that which we find farther west. The greater part of the road (the barabara, in the carriers’ jargon, that is to say, the path cut to the regulation width on which all the long-distance traffic takes place) runs as far as Nyangao through thick scrub from 10 to 15 feet high, from which rise here and there single trees of twice or three times that height. Several times in the course of the day’s march the traveller comes across large open spaces in the bush on either side of the path. It is clear from the absence of underwood and the presence of charred stumps that this is old cultivated ground—no doubt the sites of former villages. But where are the huts and where the people who once hoed their gardens here? Here we find a typical touch of African history, more especially in recent times, when its primitive conditions have been modified by the modern plantation system with its demand for labour and the necessity for a native military force. Originally and in himself the African is by no means shy, on the contrary, he is inquisitive and fully alive to the attractions of town life and social intercourse. But he cannot stand having his private affairs interfered with. Every caravan of inland natives on their way to the coast, whether to sell their supplies of wax, tobacco or what not, or to engage themselves as labourers to some European, considered that they had a natural right to expect food and drink from the villagers along their route. Even the caravan of a white man is apt to make the same sort of demands on the villagers. How often have I seen my men scatter at every halt, to ask for some service or other—perhaps merely the loan of a gourd dipper—at one or other of the straggling huts, which may be half-a-mile apart. However good-natured and obliging the native may be, he cannot put up with an indefinite continuance of such disturbances to the quiet of his home life, and therefore prefers to pull down his huts and build new ones in the bush at a distance from the main road, where they can only be reached by narrow side paths.

Anthropologically speaking, one might take the Wamwera for Indians, such is the lustrous copper tone of their skins. At first I thought that this marked redness of tint was a peculiarity of the tribe, but have since met with many individuals of exactly the same shade among the Makua of Hatia’s, Nangoo and Chikugwe, and a few among the Yaos at this place and those at Mtua, and Mtama. In fact, it seems to me very difficult to do any really satisfactory anthropological work here—the types are too much mixed, and it is impossible to tell from any man’s features the tribe to which he belongs. Probably, indeed, there is no distinction of race at all, for Wamwera, Wangindo, Wayao, Makonde, Matambwe and Makua alike belong to the great sub-group of the East African Bantu. This is one additional reason, when time is so precious, for giving to anthropology even less attention than I had originally planned. Let the gentlemen come out here themselves with their measuring instruments, compasses and poles—we ethnographers have more urgent work to attend to.

The Wamwera are just now in a deplorable condition. The whole of this tribe was concerned in the rising, and though refusing to acknowledge defeat in battle after battle, were ultimately forced to take refuge in the bush. The mere fact of living for months without shelter in the rainy season would of itself cause suffering enough; and when we add that they have had no harvest, being unable to sow their crops at the beginning of the rains, it can readily be understood that numbers must have perished. Now that most of the ringleaders have been secured and sent down to the coast, the survivors are gradually coming forth from their hiding-places. But what a spectacle do the poor creatures present! encrusted more thickly than usual with dirt, emaciated to skeletons, suffering from skin-diseases of various kinds, with inflamed eyes—and exhaling a nauseous effluvium. But at least they are willing to face the white man—a sign of newly-established confidence in our rule which must not be undervalued.

Several hours’ hard marching from Nyangao bring us to the residence of “Sultan” Hatia. He is the fourth of his name on this tiny throne of the Makua. The grave of his predecessor, Hatia III, lies in a deep cave on the Unguruwe mountain. This mountain is really a promontory of the Makonde plateau projecting far into the Lukuledi plain. It is visible from the road for several days before we reach it, with its gleaming red cliff-face, which might fitly be described as the emblem of the whole Central Lukuledi region. It also plays a great part in the myths and legends of the local tribes. The traditions of the past had already gathered round it before the burial of Hatia III; but now that the dead chief rests in a dark ravine forbidden to every profane footstep, from the toil and turmoil of his life, the Unguruwe has become in popular belief a sanctuary where, on moonlight nights, Hatia rises from his grave, and assembles the ghosts of his subjects round him for the dance.

Hatia IV had returned to his capital just before our arrival, having had some months’ leisure on the coast, in which to think over the consequences of the rising. He impressed me as a broken man, physically in no better case than his subjects; moreover he was no better lodged, and certainly no better provided with food than they. On the day of our halt at his village, he was more than ordinarily depressed. A few hours previously a lion, whose impudence has made him famous throughout the country, had in broad daylight dragged a woman out of a hut, not far from the chief’s dwelling. The prints of the enormous paws were still quite clear in the sand, so that we could track the robber right round the hut in which a man with his wife and child had been sitting at their ease. The great brute had suddenly sprung on the woman who was sitting next the door. Her husband tried to hold her, but was weak from illness, and could offer no effectual resistance. Though for some time the poor creature’s shrieks, “Nna kufa! Nna kufa!”—“I die! I die!”—could be heard in the bush, growing fainter and fainter, no one could come to her help, for the people have been deprived of their guns since the rising, and even if they had had them, there was no ammunition, the importation of this having been stopped some time ago.

The nephew and heir of Hatia IV is to take the part of avenger. He is a handsome, jet-black youth with a small frizzled moustache on his upper lip, and an enviably thick growth of woolly hair on his scalp. Armed with a rifle, of which he is unconscionably proud, he has come with us from Lindi in order to deliver his people from the plague of lions. Such an expression is, in truth, no exaggeration as far as this place is concerned. It is said that the whole length of the road from Nyangao to Masasi has been divided between four pairs of lions, each of which patrols its own section, on the look-out for human victims. Even the three missionaries at Nyangao are not safe; Father Clement, when out for a walk, not long ago, suddenly found himself face to face with a huge lion, who, however, seemed quite as much startled by the incident as the good Father himself.

After examining the architecture of the present Wamwera huts, I can easily understand how the lion at Hatia’s could drag the woman out from the interior. Anyone desirous of studying the evolution of the human dwelling-house could very well see its beginnings here. Most of these dwellings are nothing more or less than two walls, consisting of bundles of grass roughly tied together, and leaning against each other in a slanting position. The addition of gable-ends marks quite a superior class of house. Besides this, the Wamwera have been compelled to build their huts, such as they are, in the untouched jungle, since they have lost all they had, even the necessary implements for tillage and for clearing the bush. Their villages, containing their only possessions of any value, were of course levelled with the ground by our troops. The lion is shy of open spaces, but feels at home in the pori, which he looks upon as his natural hunting-ground, and where he can creep unseen close up to a hut before making his deadly spring.

One point I must not forget. Even before leaving Lindi, my mouth had watered at the descriptions I heard of the extraordinary appearance presented by the Wamwera women. But I find that these descriptions come far short of the reality. The famous Botocudos of Brazil with their labrets are nothing to the southern tribes of German East Africa. I had long known that the Makonde plateau and the whole surrounding country belong to the region of the pelele, or lip ring, but I have never come across a good illustration of earlier date than my own. The accompanying reproductions of photographs will show the nature of this extraordinary decoration more clearly than any description.

The pelele, or, as it is called in Kimwera, itona, is only worn by the women, but among them it is universal. It is a peg, in older persons even an actual disc, of ebony, or else of some light-coloured wood bleached snow-white with argillaceous earth, inserted in the upper lip, which is perforated and stretched to receive it. Of course, a disc the size of a two-shilling piece is not inserted all at once: the operation is very gradual and begins by piercing the lip, between a girl’s seventh and ninth year, with the end of a razor which is ground into the shape of an awl.[^[8]] The hole is kept open by inserting a foreign body of small size, such as a thin stalk of grass, or the like. It is then enlarged by adding another stalk at regular intervals; and after a time, a strip of palm-leaf rolled up into a spiral is substituted. This, being elastic, presses against the sides of the opening, and so, in due course renders it large enough to receive the first solid plug. Among the Wamwera the diameter of this varies from the thickness of a finger to the size of a florin; the older Makonde women, however, are said to have them twice as large. Naturally I am all impatience to see these people, whose country, moreover, is as yet a complete terra incognita, as far as science is concerned.

A MWERA WOMAN

YOUNG MAN OF THE MWERA TRIBE

Not content with the itona, the old women sometimes wear a pin or peg in the lower lip, called nigulila. It is long and slender, ending in a round knob, and is intended to divert the eye from the withered skin and faded charms of the wearer.[^[9]] Discs or plugs inserted in the lobe of the ear are also very general. Furthermore, the countenance of these fair ones are covered with extraordinary scars which, at a distance, suggest that they must have passed their youth at a German university. On a close inspection it will be found that these are not scars, left by straight cuts, but consist of a multitude of small keloids arranged in various patterns. The patterns are made by parallel rows of small cuts (usually vertical), which have been prevented from healing by repeatedly opening them during the process of cicatrization. Thus in the course of weeks and months they take the form of conspicuous swellings which, in their totality, give a distinctive character to the whole physiognomy.

MWERA WOMAN WITH PIN IN LOWER LIP

Even this is not enough to satisfy the craving of the Wamwera women for adornment. If the cloth draping chest and back slips aside for a moment, either through an incautious movement on the part of the wearer or through the inseparable baby being shifted from its usual place on its mother’s back to her hip—the astonished eye discovers that the surfaces thus revealed are adorned with markings similar to those on the face. Even the hips and upper part of the thighs are said to be covered with them. The ethnographer, reflecting on these and other queer manifestations of human vanity, may be tempted, perhaps, to indulge in a comfortable sense of superiority. But, after all, the fashion of wearing earrings is not quite extinct in Europe; and the advantages of the corset, considered as an aid to beauty, might be quite as much open to discussion as the African ornaments we have just been describing. I am alluding, of course, to those women who think that tight lacing improves the figure. Otherwise I am inclined to agree with Max Buchner of Munich, who thinks that some form of this article would be of great service to the women of all the less-clothed races among whom appliances for supporting the bust are unknown.

Up to the present, I have been able to see but little of the real life of the inland tribes, yet that little has been very interesting. On the march to Masasi I noticed that wherever the natives had taken an active part in the rebellion, the roads were in perfect order, while in the territory of the friendly tribes they were nearly impassable with high grass, and sometimes bushes. These allies of ours are now, secure in the consciousness of their past services, saying to themselves that they may take things easy for a time, as the “Mdachi” will surely consider their loyalty and make no very severe demands on them. Captain Ewerbeck, however, has been laying down the law with great precision and energy to the Akidas and Jumbes, the district chiefs and village headmen, who are responsible for order within their own districts.

One can enjoy magnificent spectacles by night in Africa. Sitting in front of my tent on the way here, or now, when I step out in front of the Baraza—the rest-house in which I have taken up my abode—I see, wherever I turn my eyes, the red glow of flames on the horizon. This is the burning of the grass—a custom practised by the Africans for thousands of years. It may be remembered that when Hanno, on his voyage from Carthage, sailed down the West coast of Africa, nothing produced such a deep and lasting impression of terror on himself and his crew as the streams of fire seen to flow down from the coast-ranges at night. In my opinion, which, of course, I do not consider decisive, these streams of fire were certainly not, as has so often been maintained, connected with any volcanic phenomena, but resulted from the processes still put into operation by the inhabitants of the Dark Continent every night during the dry season.

ROAD THROUGH THE BUSH IN THE NEIGHBOURHOOD OF CHINGULUNGULU

Much has been written in our Colonial publications with regard to the benefit or injury to be derived from this grass-burning. Some condemn it as deleterious to the growth of trees, while others take the part of the natives and say that only by burning off the high grass and brushwood of the African forest at regular intervals can they possibly get the upper hand of the vermin, which would otherwise increase by myriads. Besides, it is said, the ashes are for the present the only manure that can be applied on a large scale. I do not feel justified in attempting a decision, but confine myself to admiring the magnificent effect of the near and distant fires, reflected in the most varied gradations of light and colour in the misty atmosphere. None of these fires, moreover, is dangerous to the traveller; where the flames seize a patch of completely dry grass, they rush along, it is true, with a noise like the crackling of musketry-fire; but otherwise, and indeed in general, the people have to keep up the conflagration by systematic kindling of the grass in fresh places. In any case they have the direction and extent of the fire fully under control.

This burning is, so far as I am enabled to judge, only possible where the remarkable form of vegetation prevails which characterizes the greater part of Africa, and covers the whole extent of the great plain on the west and north-west of the Makonde plateau. This is the “open bush and grass steppe” (lichte Baumgras-steppe) as it has been very appropriately named by the geologist Bornhardt. In fact, this form of vegetation is neither exclusively forest nor altogether steppe; it unites the characters of the two. Imagine a particularly neglected orchard, in some rural part of Germany (where I am sorry to say the farmers still pay far too little attention to this branch of cultivation), and fill up the spaces between the scattered apple, pear or plum trees, not with our modest German grass but with the African variety, two or three yards high and more like canes, mix this with underwood—thorny, but not very close—and finally bind together the tops of the trees (which are not very high—certainly none of them over forty feet—and all varieties having a sort of general resemblance to our maple) by means of a system of airy lianas. Having done all this, you have, without any further strain on the imagination, a fairly correct picture of what is here generally called pori, though in the North the name of “myombo forest” is more usually applied to it. During the rains, and just after them, this pori must undeniably have its charms,—in fact, Ewerbeck and his companion Knudsen are indefatigable in singing its praises as it appears in that season. Now, on the other hand, in July, it is anything but beautiful: it neither impresses us by the number and size of its trees, nor refreshes us with any shade whatever, nor presents the slightest variation in the eternal monotony which greets the traveller as soon as he leaves Nyangao and crosses to the right bank of the Lukuledi and from which he only escapes after a march of several weeks, high up on the Upper Rovuma. “So this is the exuberant fertility of the tropics, and this is what an evergreen primeval forest looks like!” I thought, after enjoying this spectacle for the space of a whole day. Just as with regard to the alleged want of appetite experienced by Europeans in the tropics, we ought to see that the general public is more correctly informed as to the supposed fertility of Equatorial Africa, and so saved from forming extravagant notions of the brilliant future in store for our colonies.

The pori becomes downright unpleasant wherever the owners of the country have just been burning it. To right and left of the road extends a thick layer of black or grey ashes, on which, here and there, lies a dead tree, steadily smouldering away. Now that there is no grass to obstruct the view, the eye ranges unhindered through what at other times is impenetrable bush. For the sportsman this state of things is a pleasure, as he can now see game at almost any distance; but for the traveller, especially if encumbered with a large caravan, it is nothing less than torture. This is not so much the case in the early morning, when the fine particles of dust are laid by the heavy dews; but, when the sun rises higher, marked differences of temperature are produced within a comparatively small area. Tramping on through the glowing heat of noon, suspecting no harm and intending none, the traveller suddenly sees something whirling in front of his feet—a black snake spinning round in a raging vortex, rises straight up, dances round him in coquettish curves, and then vanishes sideways behind the trees, with a low chuckle, as if in derision of the stranger and his immaculately clean khaki suit. The native followers have not suffered, being of the same colour as the insidious foe. But what is the aspect presented by the leader of the expedition! Though not guaranteed to wash, he presents a sufficiently close resemblance to a blackamoor, and under the circumstances, the faithful Moritz and Kibwana, as soon as we have reached camp, will have no more pressing task than to prepare the bath for their master and thoroughly soap him down from the crown of his head to the sole of his foot. And all this is the work of the pori whirlwind.

In these small distresses of life on the march, the imperturbable cheerfulness of the natives is always a comfort. Among the Wamwera on the scene of the late rising, there was little inclination for dancing and merriment—the prevailing misery was too great; but everywhere else, before our camp was even half arranged, the inhabitants of the place had assembled in crowds, and the scene which ensued was always the same in its general features, though varying in detail. The negro has to dance. As the German, whenever anything lifts him out of the dead level of the workaday mood, feels irresistibly impelled to sing, so the African misses no opportunity of assembling for a ngoma. The word ngoma, in its original signification means nothing more than a drum; in an extended sense it denotes all festivities carried on to the sound of the drum. These festivities have an indisputable advantage over ours, in that the instrumental music, dancing, and singing are all simultaneous. The band drums, but also occasionally improvises songs, the audience standing round in a circle form the chorus and at the same time march round the band to the rhythm of the song. This is the usual picture, with all its strangeness so fascinating that the oldest residents in the coast towns do not think it beneath their dignity to honour this expression of aboriginal life by attending from time to time, if only for a few minutes. Other and less sophisticated whites are regular habitués at these festivals, and never let a Saturday evening pass—this being the day when ngomas are allowed by law—without standing for hours among the panting and perspiring crowd. One of these dances, executed by the women of every place I have so far visited, on every possible occasion, is peculiarly pleasing. It is called likwata (“clapping of hands”). A number of women and girls stand in a circle, facing inwards. Suddenly arms rise into the air, mouths open, feet twitch in unison, and all goes on in exact step and time; hand-clapping, singing and dancing. With the peculiar grace which characterizes all movements of native women, the whole circle moves to the right, first one long step, then three much shorter. The hand-clapping, in time and force, accurately follows the above rhythm, as does the song, which I shall presently reproduce. Suddenly, at a certain beat, two figures step out of the line of dancers—they trip in the centre of the circle, moving round one another in definite figures, the movements in which, unfortunately, are too rapid for the eye to follow—and then return to their fixed places in the circle to make way for two more solo artists. So the game goes on, without interruption or diminution of intensity, hour after hour, regardless of the babies who, tied in the inevitable cloth on their mothers’ backs, have gone through the whole performance along with them. In this confined, hot, and often enough dirty receptacle, they sleep, wake or dream, while the mother wields the heavy pestle, pounding the maize in the mortar, or grinds the meal on the stone, while she breaks the ground for sowing, hoes up the weeds or gathers in the crops, while she carries the heavy earthen water-jar on her head from the distant spring, and while, as now, she sways to and fro in the dance. No wonder if, under such circumstances, the native baby is thoroughly familiar with the national step and rhythm even before he has left the carrying-cloth and the maternal breast. The sight of tiny shrimps of three and four moving with absolute certainty through the mazes of the grown people’s dance, would almost of itself be worth the journey to East Africa.

And now come the very profound words accompanying this dance which seems so full of meaning and poetry. The spectator standing by and watching the varied and graceful movements of the women—perhaps working the cinematograph at the same time—is apt, in spite of all previous resolutions, to pay too little heed to the words sung. When, the dance over, he arranges the performers before the phonograph, he is tempted to believe that his ears have deceived him, so utterly inane are these words. I have made records of the likwata at a number of different places, but never succeeded in getting any other result than the following—

[^[10]]

The reader will agree that no undue amount of intellect has been lavished on this ditty, but this is a trait common to all native songs here in the South. Even those acknowledged virtuosi, my Wanyamwezi, cannot do very much better in this respect. Here we have really every right to say, “We Wazungu are better singers after all!”

MOUNTAINS NEAR MASASI. DRAWN BY SALIM MATOLA

CHAPTER V
LOOKING ROUND

Masasi, July 25, 1906.

I have been here at Masasi quite a week. My abode is a hut in the purest Yao style, built by the natives under the orders of the Imperial District Commissioner, expressly for the benefit of passing European travellers. This hut—or, I suppose I ought to say, this house, for it is a sizeable building of some forty feet by twenty—lies outside the boma which shelters the local police force. It is an oval structure whose roof is exactly like an overturned boat. The material of the walls is, as everywhere in this country, bamboo, and wood, plastered inside and out with dark grey clay. My palace is superior to the abodes of the natives in the matter of windows, though they are not glazed. At night, before I creep under my mosquito-net into the camp bed, the openings are closed with shutters constructed of strong pieces of bamboo. The floor, as in all native huts, is of beaten earth, which can in general be kept quite clean, but is not calculated for the sharp edges of European boot-heels, which soon play havoc with its surface. The interior forms an undivided whole, only interrupted by the two posts standing as it were in the foci of the ellipse, and supporting the heavy thatched roof. This projects outward and downward far beyond the wall of the house, its outer edge being carried by a further ellipse of shorter posts, and so makes a broad shady passage round the whole house, such as, under the name of baraza is an essential part of every East African residence.

The natives give the name of Masasi to a whole district alike interesting from the point of view of geography, geology, botany or geography.

Almost immediately after passing Nyangao, as one comes from the coast, begins the “open bush and grass steppe” already mentioned, while at the same time the edges of the Makonde plateau on the south and of the high ground to the north of the Lukuledi retreat further and further. As one walks on, day after day, across a perfectly horizontal plain covered with the same monotonous vegetation, the journey is by no means exciting. Then, suddenly, at a turn of the path, we see a huge cliff of glittering grey. We draw a long breath and forget all our fatigue in presence of this new charm in the landscape. Even the heavy-laden carriers step more lightly. Suddenly the bush, which has become fresher and greener as we approach the rock, ceases, and instead of the one cliff we now see a whole long range of rocky peaks, which seem to stand as a barrier right across our path. This, however, is not the case, for close to the foot of the first mountain the road turns sharply to S.S.E., running parallel and close to the range. When the range ends, the road ends too, for there, embosomed in a circle of “hill-children,”—as the native would say in his own language, i.e., low hills of a few thousand feet or under,—lies the military station of Masasi.

The dome-shaped gneiss peaks of Masasi are celebrated in geological literature: they are, in fact, unique, not in their petrographic constituents, but in the regularity of their serried ranks. Orographically this whole region of East Africa which I am now traversing is characterized by insular mountains (Inselberge), as they are called by the geologist Bornhardt. The name is very appropriate, for, if the land were to sink some three hundred feet, or the Indian Ocean to rise in the same degree, the valleys of the Lukuledi, Umbekuru and Rovuma, as well as, in all probability, several rivers in Portuguese East Africa, and also the whole vast plain west of the Mwera and Makonde plateaus would form one great lake. Here in the west, only these lumpy, heavy gneiss peaks would rise as tiny islands above the waters, while towards the coast the plateaus just mentioned would so to speak represent the continents of this piece of the earth’s surface.

THE INSULAR MOUNTAIN OF MASASI

In general these peaks are scattered irregularly over the whole wide area of the country. If I climb one of the smaller hills immediately behind my house, I can overlook an almost illimitable number of these remarkable formations to north, west and south. They are mostly single or in small clusters, but several days’ journey further west a large number are gathered into a close cluster in the Majeje country. The Masasi range in our immediate neighbourhood is the other exception. Corresponding to their irregular distribution is a great variety in height. Many are only small hillocks, while others rise to a sheer height of 1,600 feet and over from the plain, which here at Masasi is fully 1,300 feet above sea-level. The highest of these hills thus attain about the middle height among our German mountains.

As to the origin of these strange mountain shapes, not being a geologist, I am in no position to form an opinion. According to Bornhardt, who in his magnificent work on the earth-sculpture and geology of German East Africa[^[11]] has described the geological features of this landscape with admirable vividness, all these insular peaks testify to a primeval and never interrupted struggle between the constructive activity of the sea and the denuding, eroding, digging and levelling action of flowing water and of atmospheric influences. He sees this tract in primordial times as an immense unbroken plain of primitive gneiss. In this, in course of time, streams and rivers excavated their valleys, all more or less in the same direction. At the end of this long-continued process, long hill ridges were left standing between the different valleys. Then came another epoch, when stratification took the place of destruction. Whereas formerly, rain, springs, brooks and rivers carried the comminuted and disintegrated rock down to the sea, now, the sea itself overflowed the land, filled the valleys, and probably covered the whole former scene of action with its sediment. This sediment, again, in the course of further ages became hardened into rock. Once more the scene changed; again the land was left dry; and wind, rain and running water could once more begin their work of destruction. But this time their activity took a different direction. They had formerly carried the detritus north or south, but now they swept it eastward, at right angles to their former course, and so gradually ground and filed away the whole of the later deposit, and also eroded the long ridges which had survived from the first period of destruction. Finally, when even this primitive rock had been worn away down to the bottom level of the first valleys, nothing remained of the old sheet of gneiss except in the angles formed by the crossing of the two lines of abrasion and erosion. The superincumbent strata being swept away, the hard gneiss cores of these angles of ground form the very insular peaks I have been describing. Bornhardt’s theory is a bold one and assumes quite immeasurable periods of time, but it has been generally accepted as the most plausible of all attempts to explain the facts. In any case it is a brilliant proof of the capacity for inductive reasoning possessed by German scholars.

These mighty masses of rock, springing with an unusually steep slope, direct from the plain, dominate their surroundings wherever one comes across them, but where they appear in such a wonderfully regular series as they do here—Mkwera, Masasi, Mtandi, Chironji, Kitututu, Mkomahindo, and the rest of the lesser and greater elevations within my horizon,—they present an incomparable and quite unforgettable spectacle. When once the projected railway across the Umbekuru basin is completed, the tourist agencies will have no more popular excursion than that to the Masasi Range.

From a botanical point of view, also, the visitor finds himself well repaid for his trouble. Once in the shadow of these hills, the desolation of the pori is forgotten as if by magic; one plantation succeeds another, and patches of all the different varieties of millet bow their heavy cobs and plumes in the fresh morning breeze, which is a real refreshment after the stifling heat of the long day’s march through the bush. Beans of all kinds, gourds and melons, rejoice the eye with their fresh green, on either side of the path the mhogo (manioc) spreads its branches with their pale-green leaves and pink stalks. Wherever there is an interval between these various crops, the bazi pea rattles in its pod. This fertility (astonishing for the southern part of German East Africa) is only rendered possible by the geological constitution of the soil. Wherever we have set foot on the main road, and north and south of the same, as far as the eye can reach, the principal constituents of the upper stratum have been loamy sand and sandy loam. In places where the action of water has been more marked, we find an outcrop of bare, smooth gneiss rocks; or the ground is covered with hard quartzite, crunching under foot. Only where these mighty gneiss ranges break the monotony does anyone examining the country with an eye to its economic value find full satisfaction. Gneiss weathers easily and forms excellent soil, as the natives have long ago discovered; and, though they by no means despise the less fertile tracts, yet the most favoured sites for settlements have always been those in the immediate vicinity of the gneiss islands. Masasi, with its enormous extent, taking many hours to traverse, is the typical example of such economic insight.

Since this would naturally attract people from all directions, it is not to be wondered at if a question as to the tribal affinities of the Masasi people should land one in a very chaos of tribes. Makua, Wayao, Wangindo, a few Makonde, and, in addition a large percentage of Coast men:—such are the voluntary immigrants to this little centre of social evolution. To these we must add a miscellaneous collection of people belonging to various tribes of the far interior, who are here included under the comprehensive designation of Wanyasa. These Wanyasa are the living testimony to an experiment devised in the spirit of the highest philanthropy, which, unfortunately, has not met with the success hoped for and expected by its promoters. This very region was some decades ago the scene of an extremely active slave-traffic; the trade, kept up by the Zanzibar and Coast Arabs, preferred the route through this easily-traversed and at that time thickly-populated country. The situation of Kilwa Kivinje on a bay so shallow that Arab slave-dhows, but not the patrolling gun-boats of rigidly moral Powers, can anchor there, is to this day a speaking testimony to that dark period in the not excessively sunny history of Africa.

In order to get at the root of the evil, English philanthropists have for many years been in the habit of causing the unhappy victims driven down this road in the slave-stick, to be ransomed by the missionaries and settled on their stations as free men. The principal settlement of this kind is that among the gneiss peaks of Masasi. The Christian world cherished the hope that these liberated slaves might be trained into grateful fellow-believers and capable men. But when one hears the opinion of experienced residents in the country, it is not possible without a strong dose of preconceived opinion to see in these liberated converts anything better than their compatriots. The fact remains and cannot by any process of reasoning be explained away, that Christianity does not suit the native; far less, in any case than Islam, which unhesitatingly allows him all his cherished freedom.

Personally, however, I must say I have not so far noticed any discreditable points in the character of the Masasi people; all who have come in contact with me have treated me in the same friendly fashion as the rest of those I have come across in this country. Such contact has by no means been wanting in spite of the shortness of my stay here, since I have thrown myself into my work with all the energy of which I am capable, and am convinced that I have already seen with my own eyes and heard with my own ears a large and important part of the people’s life.

The very beginning of my studies was remarkably promising. The Mission station of Masasi lies a short hour’s walk north north-eastward from us, immediately under the precipitous side of Mtandi Mountain. This Mtandi is the most imposing peak of the whole range; it rises in an almost vertical cliff directly behind the straw huts of the Mission, ending, at a height of nearly 3,100 feet in a flat dome. District Commissioner Ewerbeck and I had already, when riding past it on the day of our arrival, determined to visit this mountain; and we carried out our project a day or two later. The trip was not without a certain fascination. At 4.30 a.m. in a pitch-dark tropical night, we were ready to march, the party consisting of two Europeans and half-a-dozen carriers and boys, with Ewerbeck’s Muscat donkey and my old mule. As quickly as the darkness allowed, the procession passed along the barabara, turning off to the left as we approached Mtandi. The animals with their attendants were left behind at the foot of the mountain, while the rest of us, making a circuit of the Mission grounds, began our climbing practice.

I had equipped myself for my African expedition with the laced boots supplied by Tippelskirch expressly for the tropics. When I showed these to “old Africans” at Lindi, they simply laughed at me and asked what I expected to do in this country with one wretched row of nails on the edge of the sole. They advised me to send the things at once to Brother William at the Benedictine Mission, who earns the gratitude of all Europeans by executing repairs on shoes and boots. Brother William, in fact, very kindly armed my boots with a double row of heavy Alpine hobnails, and I wore a pair the first day out from Lindi, but never again on the march. They weighed down my feet like lead, and it soon appeared that the heavy nails were absolutely unnecessary on the fine sand of the barabara. After that first day, I wore my light laced shoes from Leipzig, which make walking a pleasure. Here, on the other hand, on the sharp ridges of Mtandi, the despised mountain boots rendered me excellent service.

I prefer to omit the description of my feelings during this ascent. It grew lighter, and we went steadily upwards, but this climbing, in single file, from rock to rock and from tree to tree was, at any rate for us two well-nourished and comfortable Europeans, by no means a pleasure. In fact, we relinquished the ambition of reaching the highest peak and contented ourselves with a somewhat lower projection. This was sensible of us, for there was no question of the magnificent view we had expected; the heights and the distant landscape were alike veiled in thick mist, so that even the longest exposure produced no effect to speak of on my photographic plates.

BUSH-FIRE ON THE MAKONDE PLATEAU

OUR ASCENT OF MTANDI MOUNTAIN. DRAWN BY JUMA

This ascent, though barren of results in other respects, has produced one small monument of African art, a drawing of our climbing caravan, which is here offered to the reader’s inspection. The native artist has quite correctly indicated the steepness of the mountain by the vertical line representing the road. The confusion of circles and curves at the lower end stands for the buildings of the Mission station:—the foundations of a church vast enough, should it ever be finished, to hold all the converted heathen of Africa and the adjacent continents; the ci devant cowhouse, in which the two aged clergymen have found a primitive refuge after the destruction of their beautiful buildings by the Majimaji, the boys’ school and the girls’ school—two large bamboo huts in the native style; and the dwellings of the native teachers and boarders. The curly labyrinth at the upper end of the line is the top of the mountain with its gneiss blocks. The two uppermost climbers are the kirongozi or guide and one of our men, the third is Captain Ewerbeck, and the fourth myself. The District Commissioner is readily recognizable by the epaulettes with the two stars denoting his military rank, which belong to the uniform worn on duty by this class of officials. Of all attributes of the white man this seems to make the greatest impression on the native mind, since, in every drawing in my possession where officers are represented, their rank is invariably (and always correctly) indicated by the number of stars. In the same way the native draughtsman never makes a mistake with regard to the stripes on the sleeves of non-commissioned officers, black or white. The advantages of a well-developed corporation are here evident! Ewerbeck and Seyfried are about the same age as myself, and our chest and other measurements are pretty nearly identical. This I suppose must be the reason why the inhabitants of Lindi, and later on those of the interior, have promoted me to the rank of captain; at Lindi I went by the name of Hoffmani mpya, “the new captain” (Hauptmann). The drawing here reproduced is evidence of my promotion, the artist having bestowed the epaulettes on me as well as on Ewerbeck. The figures behind us are of no importance, they are only the rest of our party. Now, however, comes the psychologically noteworthy point; I figure in the picture twice over, first laboriously climbing the mountain, and then in majestic pose at the top, in the act of photographing the African landscape. You must know that the tripod shown in the drawing is that of my 13 × 18 cm. camera, the zig-zags between its legs are the brass struts which keep it rigid; the long snake-like line is the rubber tube for the release of the instantaneous shutter—of which, as a matter of fact, I could make no use on account of the mist,—and the photographer is, as above stated, myself. The men behind me are my personal attendants to whom the more fragile parts of the apparatus are usually entrusted. The graphic reproduction of this ascent is no great achievement on the part of the native intellect, but nevertheless it is a very important document for the beginnings of art in general and for the African point of view in particular. To the ethnographer, of all men, the most apparently insignificant matters are not without importance, and this is why the prospect of working undisturbed for many months in these surroundings is such a delight to me.

Our ascent of Mtandi was concluded, at any rate for the present, by a ceremonious breakfast, to which the two missionaries had kindly invited us. Englishmen, as is well known, live extremely well in their own country; but abroad, too, even in the far interior of a continent, they know how to make the best of things. I was here impressed with the fact that Masasi must be a “very nourishing district,” as Wilhelm Raabe would say. We had no champagne, it is true—Archdeacon Carnon had set it before us on the previous day, in a huge water-jug, apologizing for the absence of champagne glasses. We showed him that we were able to appreciate his hospitality, even in the absence of such refinements.

The merriest part of our whole Mtandi expedition, however, was the ride home, with the Mission pupils trotting along beside us. The little fellows looked warlike enough with their bows and arrows, and seemed desirous of shouting each other down. I could not at first make out what they wanted, but on reaching home, that is to say, our police-post, I soon understood that their object was nothing less than to offer me the whole of their martial equipment for my ethnographic collection. But not as a present—giving things away for nothing is not in the negro’s line, and in this he resembles our German rustics. On the contrary, these young people demanded fancy prices for the bows which they had made on purpose to sell them to the mzungu, that remarkable character who buys all sorts of native rubbish. I purchased such of their wares as seemed suitable for my objects, and thought it advisable to prevent disappointment to those whose offers had been refused by giving each a copper or two out of the famous jar of which we shall hear again later on. Before doing so, however, I instituted a pleasing experiment, instructive for myself and highly enjoyable for the youth of Masasi, in the shape of an archery competition.

Comparative ethnography has for a long time past busied itself with the task of classifying and analyzing all the technical and mental activities of man. Thus some decades ago, the American, Morse,[^[12]] ascertained that all men who shoot, or ever have shot, with the bow, have certain definite ways of drawing it. There are about half-a-dozen distinct methods, which are so distributed over the globe that, in some places the same release (or “loose” as it is technically called) is known to be common to the whole of a large area, while elsewhere the most abrupt contrasts may be observed between contiguous nations or tribes. It might be supposed that there could be no possible differences in so simple an action as that of drawing a bow; but experiment shows otherwise, and this experiment I have made over and over again in the course of my lectures.

It is a thousand to one that any German (leaving out of consideration the English and the Belgians, who still practise archery according to the rules of the game, and can distinguish a good “loose” from a bad one), when he has taken the bow in his left hand and grasped the arrow and the string in his right, will hold the notch as it rests on the string between his thumb and forefinger, and thus only indirectly draw the string by means of the arrow. This, which is the “loose” we used on the little toy bows of our boyhood, is the very worst conceivable, as anyone who understands the other methods can convince himself by every shot he tries. It is obvious that the arrow must slip from the fingers if a moderately strong pull is given. The best proof of the inferiority of this particular “loose” is the fact that it is very seldom found among those sections of mankind who still use the bow as a serious and effective weapon, whether in war or hunting. These handle it after a very different fashion. Only where the bow is a mere survival, and only used as a toy by children (the most conservative class in the community), as for instance among ourselves, this method, quite useless for an effective shot, is practised simply because no better is known.

If I felt compelled to take the boys at Masasi Mission as a standard for estimating the culture of the race, I should have to say that here too the bow is a survival, for nine-tenths of the whole multitude shot in the same way as our boys at home, but with one difference; we hold the bow horizontally, the African boys held it vertically, the arrow lying on the left side of the string between the index and middle finger. Only one-tenth of the whole number used a different “loose,” and these, significantly enough, were older boys, who therefore had evidently taken over with them into their Christianity a considerable dose of old African conservatism.

My competition was arranged with a view, not so much of registering the number of hits and misses, as of observing the method of drawing; but, notwithstanding, I must say that the little archers acquitted themselves by no means contemptibly. It is true that the distances were short, and my mark was scarcely a small one, being a copy of the Tägliche Rundschau; but the greater number sent their arrows inside the rings I had hastily drawn on this improvised target. They were proud of their success, too; and when I praised a good shot it was good to see the triumphant looks that the little black hero cast round on his admiring companions.

As to the other methods, if I were asked the question in my Leipzig lecture-room, I should have to answer it at once. As it is, I am enabled to claim the privilege of the investigator and excuse myself from giving further information till I have collected sufficient material by a series of fresh observations. I hope to gratify my readers’ thirst for knowledge when I have traversed the whole plain north of the Rovuma, and, encamped on the cool heights of the Makonde plateau, find leisure to look back and take stock of my studies. Till then—Au revoir, Messieurs!

MNYASA HUNTER WITH DOG. DRAWN BY SALIM MATCLA

CHAPTER VI
NATIVE LIFE SEEN FROM THE INSIDE

Masasi, end of July, 1906.

Every normal human being is a walking demonstration of the theory of adaptation to environment. I have been in Africa barely two months, and only as yet a fraction of a month in the interior, and yet I feel quite at home already. After all, I could scarcely do otherwise. On the 21st, when we had only lived together a few days, Mr. Ewerbeck marched away before daybreak, by the light of a lantern borne before him through the darkness of the tropic night, to attend to higher duties at Lindi, viz., the reception of the eight delegates from the Reichstag, now fairly embarked on that desperate adventure which for many months past has kept our daily press busy celebrating their heroism.

Nils Knudsen remains behind as the last relic of civilization. His name alone is sufficient to indicate his Scandinavian origin, and he is, in fact, a fair-haired descendant of the Vikings. He joined the expedition so unobtrusively that at first I scarcely noticed the presence of a third European. While Ewerbeck and I marched proudly at the head of our long line of followers, Knudsen usually brought up the rear, and in camp he remained modestly in the background. Now that we have fixed our headquarters at Masasi, he has become prominent by virtue of his office; he is supposed to keep things straight here and exercise some supervision over the native local authorities. Whether this is necessary, I am at present unable to judge, having as yet no insight into the difficulties of internal administration in a large district like Lindi. However, a man who knows the country as well as Ewerbeck does, would hardly have taken such a measure without good reason. In the meantime I have persuaded Knudsen to quit his tent—which, to judge by its venerable appearance, must have been left behind as too far gone to take away, by Vasco Da Gama when he landed in this part of Africa—and come to live with me in the rest-house. Now he is installed, with his scanty possessions—two old tin trunks, which do not even appear to be full—on one side of the spacious apartment, while I with my princely outfit reside on the other. He is, however, abundantly compensated for the niggardliness with which fortune has treated him by goodness of heart and fineness of feeling. Knudsen’s life has been adventurous enough, and recalls to some extent the fate of that English sailor who was wrecked among the aborigines of South-East Australia, and had to live as a savage among savages. My fair-haired neighbour did not fare quite so badly as that; but he has had plenty of time to “go Fanti” had he been so disposed. So far as I have yet ascertained anything about his personal affairs, he started life as cabin-boy on board a merchant vessel, from which he ran away about ten years ago, when it was anchored in a harbour of Madagascar. He wandered about this island for some years, and at last found his way across to the mainland and into the hinterland of Lindi. He says that he never learnt a trade, but professes to know something of a great many, and can act on occasion as mason, builder, carpenter, and locksmith. Indeed he erected all the buildings at the Luisenfelde mines, far south near the Rovuma, which I may yet be able to visit, and was general factotum there as long as they continued working. Since then the municipality of Lindi has appointed him head instructor at the industrial school, from which post he is at present on leave of absence.

THROUGH THE BUSH ON A COLLECTING EXCURSION

Our manner of life here is, of course, essentially different from that followed on the march. Life on the march is always full of charm, more especially in a country quite new to one; and mine has so far been entirely without drawbacks. In African travel-books we find that almost every expedition begins with a thousand difficulties. The start is fixed for a certain hour, but no carriers appear, and when at last the leader of the expedition has, with infinite pains, got his men together, they have still endless affairs to settle, wives and sweethearts to take leave of, and what not, and have usually vanished from the traveller’s ken on the very first evening. In my case everything went like clockwork from the start. I can blame no one but myself for the quarter of an hour’s delay in starting from Lindi, which was caused by my being late for breakfast. On the second morning the askari could not quite get on with the folding of the tent, and Moritz with the best will in the world failed to get my travelling-lamp into its case, which was certainly a very tight fit. But with these exceptions we have all behaved as if we had been on the road for months. Anyone who wants a substantial breakfast first thing in the morning, after the English fashion, should not go travelling in Africa. I have given directions to wake me at five. Punctually to the minute, the sentinel calls softly into the tent, “Amka, bwana” (“Wake up, sir”). I throw both feet over the high edge of the trough-like camp bed, and jump into my khaki suit. The water which Kibwana, in the performance of his duties as housemaid, has thoughtfully placed at the tent door overnight, has acquired a refreshing coolness in the low temperature of a tropic night in the dry season. The shadow of the European at his toilet is sharply outlined on the canvas by the burning lamp, which, however, does not confine its illumination to its owner, but radiates a circle of light on the shining brown faces of the carriers and the askari. The former are busy tying up their loads for the march, while the soldiers are ready to rush on the tent like a tiger on his prey, so soon as the white man shall have finished dressing and come out. In the twinkling of an eye the tent is folded, without a word spoken, or a superfluous movement; it is division of labour in the best sense of the word, faultlessly carried out. Meanwhile the traveller goes to his camp-table, takes a hurried sip of tea, cocoa, or whatever his favourite beverage may be, eating at the same time a piece of bread baked by himself, and now stands ready for the march. “Tayari?” (“Ready?”) his voice rings out over the camp. “Bado” (“Not yet”) is the invariable answer. It is always the same lazy or awkward members of the party who utter this word beloved of the African servant. The beginner lets himself be misled by it at first, but in a few days he takes no more notice of the “Bado,” but fires off his “Safari!” (literally “Journey!”) or (as speedily introduced by me), “Los!”[^[13]] at the band in general, flourishes his walking-stick boldly in the air, thereby indicating to the two leading askari the direction of the march, and the day’s work has begun.

I do not know how other tribes are accustomed to behave at the moment of starting, but my Wanyamwezi are certainly neither to hold nor to bind on these occasions. With evident difficulty each one has got his load lifted to head or shoulder, and stands in his place bending under the weight. At the word of command arises an uproar which baffles description. All the pent-up energy of their throats rings out into the silent forest; stout sticks rattle in a wild, irregular rhythm on the wooden cases, and, alas! also on the tin boxes, which furnish only too good a resonator. The noise is infernal, but it is a manifestation of joy and pleasure. We are off! and, once on the march, the Wanyamwezi are in their element. Before long the chaos of noise is reduced to some order; these men have an infinitely delicate sense of rhythm, and so the din gradually resolves itself into a kind of march sung to a drum accompaniment, whose charm even the legs of the askari—otherwise too dignified for such childish goings-on—cannot resist.

READY FOR MARCHING (MASASI)

Oh! the beauty of these early mornings in the tropics! It is now getting on for six o’clock; the darkness of night has quickly yielded to the short twilight of dawn; the first bright rays gild the light clouds floating in the sky, and suddenly the disc of the sun rises in its wonderful majesty above the horizon. With swift, vigorous strides, and still in close order, the procession hastens through the dew-drenched bush, two soldiers in the van, as if in a military expedition; then, after an interval we Europeans, immediately followed by our personal servants with guns, travelling-flask and camp-stool. Then comes the main body of the soldiers followed by the long line of carriers and the soldiers’ boys, and, lastly, to keep the laggards up to the mark, and also to help any who have to fall out from exhaustion or illness, two soldiers bringing up the rear. An admirable figure is the mnyampara or headman. His position is in a sense purely honorary, for he receives not a farthing more wages than the lowest of his subordinates. Perhaps even this expression should not be used; he is rather primus inter pares. The mnyampara is everywhere. He is in front when the master sends for him, and he is back at the very end of the line (which becomes longer with every hour of the march) if there is a sick man needing his help. In such a case he carries the man’s load himself, as a matter of course, and brings him safely to camp. It seems to me that I have made an unusually happy choice in Pesa mbili. He is young, like the great majority of my men, probably between 23 and 25, of a deep black complexion, with markedly negroid features, and a kind of feline glitter in his eyes; he is only of medium height, but uncommonly strong and muscular; he speaks shocking Swahili—far worse than my own—and withal he is a treasure. It is not merely that he is an incomparable singer, whose pleasant baritone voice never rests whether on the march or in camp, but he thoroughly understands the organization of camp life, the distribution of tasks and the direction of his men. The demands made on such a man by the end of the day’s march are arduous enough.

The delicious coolness of the morning has long since given place to a perceptibly high temperature; the white man has exchanged his light felt hat or still lighter travelling-cap for the heavy tropical helmet, and the naked bodies of the carriers are coated with a shining polish. These, who have been longing for the day to get warm ever since they awoke shivering round the camp fire at four, have now reached the goal of their desires; they are warm—very warm—and the white man will do well to march at the head of the caravan, otherwise he will find opportunities more numerous than agreeable for studying the subject of “racial odours.” After two hours, or two hours and a half, comes the first halt. The European shouts for his camp-stool and sits watching the long string of loads coming up and being lowered to the ground. A frugal breakfast of a couple of eggs, a piece of cold meat, or a few bananas, here awaits the traveller, but the carriers, who started without a meal, steadily fast on. It seems incomprehensible that these men should be able to march for many hours with a load of sixty or seventy pounds, while practising such abstinence, but they are quite content to have it so. In the later hours of the day, it is true, they begin to flag, their steps become slower and shorter, and they lag more and more behind the personal “boys” who have no heavy loads to carry. Yet when they reach camp at last, they are as merry and cheerful as they were in the early morning. The same noise—though now with quite different words from the throats of the singers—overwhelms the European, who has long been seated at the halting-place. My company seem to be obsessed by the “Central-Magazin” at Dar es Salam, where they entered my service; they are celebrating this spacious building in the closing song of their day’s march.

CAMP AT MASASI

The duties of my followers—whether boys, askari, or porters—are by no means over when they have reached camp. By the time they come up, the leader of the expedition has looked round for a place to pitch his tent, a matter which seems to me to require special gifts. The fundamental principles to bear in mind are: that it should be within reach of good drinking water and free from noxious insects, such as ticks, mosquitoes, and jiggers. The second point, but one by no means to be overlooked, is the position of the tent-pole with regard to the course of the sun, and the next the shade of leafy trees, if that is attainable. I find it simplest to draw the outline of the tent on the sandy ground, after the spot has been carefully swept, indicating the place where I want the door to be by a break in the line. That is quite enough for my corporal in command. Scarcely have the two unfortunates, whose shoulders are weighed down by my heavy tent, come up panting and gasping for breath, when the loads are unrolled, and in a twinkling every warrior has taken up his position. “One, two, three!” and the two poles are in their places, and the next moment I hear the blows of the mallet on the tent-pegs. While this is going on, the two boys, Moritz and Kibwana, are amusing themselves with my bed. This occupation seems to represent for them the height of enjoyment, for it seems as if they would never be done. Neither scolding nor threats can avail to hasten their movements. It seems as if their usually slow brains had become absolutely torpid. Mechanically they set up the bedstead; mechanically they spread the cork mattress and the blankets over it; in the same dull, apathetic way they finally set up the framework of the mosquito-net. The soldiers have taken their departure long before my two gentlemen condescend to carry the bed into the tent.

My carriers meanwhile have found all sorts of work to do. Water has to be fetched for the whole caravan, and fires to be made, and the sanitary requirements of the camp provided for; and noon is long past by the time their turn comes and they can live their own life for an hour or two. Even now they cannot be said to revel in luxury. This southern part of the German territory is very poor in game, and in any case I have no time for shooting, so that meat is almost an unknown item in my people’s menu. Ugali, always ugali—stiff porridge of millet, maize or manioc, boiled till it has almost a vitreous consistency, and then shaped with the spoon used for stirring into a kind of pudding—forms the staple of their meals day after day.

INTERIOR OF A NATIVE HUT IN THE ROVUMA VALLEY

Here at Masasi the tables are turned; my men have a good time, while I can scarcely get a minute to myself. My escort are quite magnificently housed, they have moved into the baraza or council-house to the left of my palatial quarters and fitted it up in the native way. The negro has no love for a common apartment; he likes to make a little nest apart for himself. This is quickly done: two or three horizontal poles are placed as a scaffolding all round the projected cabin, then a thick layer of long African grass is tied to them, and a cosy place, cool by day and warm by night, is ready for each one. The carriers, on the other hand, have built themselves huts in the open space facing my abode, quite simple and neat, but, to my astonishment, quite in the Masai style—neither circular hut nor tembe. The circular hut I shall discuss in full later on, but in case anyone should not know what a tembe is like, I will here say that the best notion of it can be got by placing three or four railway carriages at right angles to one another, so that they form a square or parallelogram, with the doors inward. This tembe is found throughout most of the northern and central part of German East Africa, from Unyamwezi in the west to the coast on the east, and from the Eyasi and Manyara basin in the north to Uhehe in the south. The Masai hut, finally, can best be compared with a round-topped trunk. Though the Masai, as everyone knows, usually stand well over six feet, their huts, which (quite conformably with the owners’ mode of life as cattle-breeders par excellence) are neatly and fragrantly plastered with cowdung, are so low that even a person of normal stature cannot stand upright in them. My Wanyamwezi, however, never attempt to stand up in their huts; on the contrary, they lie about lazily all day long on their heaps of straw.

My activities are all the more strenuous. The tropical day is short, being only twelve hours from year’s end to year’s end, so that one has to make the fullest possible use of it. At sunrise, which of course is at six, everyone is on foot, breakfast is quickly despatched, and then the day’s work begins. This beginning is curious enough. Everyone who has commanded an African expedition must have experienced the persistence of the natives in crediting him with medical skill and knowledge, and every morning I find a long row of patients waiting for me. Some of them are my own men, others inhabitants of Masasi and its neighbourhood. One of my carriers has had a bad time. The carrier’s load is, in East Africa, usually packed in the American petroleum case. This is a light but strong wooden box measuring about twenty-four inches in length by twelve in width and sixteen in height, and originally intended to hold two tins of “kerosene.” The tins have usually been divorced from the case, in order to continue a useful and respected existence as utensils of all work in every Swahili household; while the case without the tins is used as above stated. One only of my cases remained true to its original destination, and travelled with its full complement of oil on the shoulders of the Mnyamwezi Kazi Ulaya.[^[14]] The honest fellow strides ahead sturdily. “It is hot,” he thinks. “I am beginning to perspire. Well, that is no harm; the others are doing the same.... It is really very hot!” he ejaculates after a while; “even my mafuta ya Ulaya, my European oil, is beginning to smell.” The smell becomes stronger and the carrier wetter as the day draws on, and when, at the end of the march, he sets down his fragrant load, it is with a double feeling of relief, for the load itself has become inexplicably lighter during the last six hours. At last the truth dawns on him and his friends, and it is a matter for thankfulness that none of them possess any matches, for had one been struck close to Kazi Ulaya, the whole man would have burst into a blaze, so soaked was he with Mr. Rockefeller’s stock-in-trade.

Whether it is to be accounted for by a strong sense of discipline or by an almost incredible apathy, the fact remains that this man did not report himself on the first day when he discovered that the tins were leaking, but calmly took up his burden next morning and carried it without a murmur to the next stopping place. Though once more actually swimming in kerosene, Kazi Ulaya’s peace of mind would not even now have been disturbed but for the fact that symptoms of eczema had appeared, which made him somewhat uneasy. He therefore presented himself with the words a native always uses when something is wrong with him and he asks the help of the all-powerful white man—“Dawa, bwana” (“Medicine, sir”), and pointed significantly, but with no sign of indignation, to his condition. A thorough treatment with soap and water seemed indicated in the first instance, to remove the incrustation of dirt accumulated in seven days’ marching. It must be said, in justice to the patient, that this state of things was exceptional and due to scarcity of water, for Kazi Ulaya’s personal cleanliness was above the average. I then dressed with lanoline, of which, fortunately, I had brought a large tin with me. The patient is now gradually getting over his trouble.

Another case gives a slight idea of the havoc wrought by the jigger. One of the soldiers’ boys, an immensely tall Maaraba from the country behind Sudi, comes up every morning to get dawa for a badly, damaged great toe. Strangely enough, I have at present neither corrosive sublimate nor iodoform in my medicine chest, the only substitute being boric acid tabloids. I have to do the best I can with these, but my patients have, whether they like it or not, got accustomed to have my weak disinfectant applied at a somewhat high temperature. In the case of such careless fellows as this Maaraba, who has to thank his own lazy apathy for the loss of his toe-nail (which has quite disappeared and is replaced by a large ulcerated wound), the hot water is after all a well-deserved penalty. He yells every time like a stuck pig, and swears by all his gods that from henceforth he will look out for the funsa with the most unceasing vigilance—for the strengthening of which laudable resolutions his lord and master, thoroughly annoyed by the childish behaviour of this giant, bestows on him a couple of vigorous but kindly meant cuffs.

As to the health of the Masasi natives, I prefer to offer no opinion for the present. The insight so far gained through my morning consultations into the negligence or helplessness of the natives as regards hygiene, only makes me more determined to study other districts before pronouncing a judgment. I shall content myself with saying here that the negro’s power of resisting the deleterious influences of his treacherous continent is by no means as great as we, amid the over-refined surroundings of our civilized life, usually imagine. Infant mortality, in particular, seems to reach a height of which we can form no idea.

Having seen my patients, the real day’s work begins, and I march through the country in the character of Diogenes. On the first few days, I crawled into the native huts armed merely with a box of matches, which was very romantic, but did not answer my purpose. I had never before been able to picture to myself what is meant by Egyptian darkness, but now I know that the epithet is merely used on the principle of pars pro toto, and that the thing belongs to the whole continent, and is to be had of the very best quality here in the plain west of the Makonde plateau. The native huts are entirely devoid of windows, a feature which may seem to us unprogressive, but which is in reality the outcome of long experience. The native wants to keep his house cool, and can only do so by excluding the outside temperature. For this reason he dislikes opening the front and back doors of his home at the same time, and makes the thatch project outward and downward far beyond the walls. My stable-lantern, carried about the country in broad daylight by Moritz, is a great amusement to the aborigines, and in truth our proceeding might well seem eccentric to anyone ignorant of our object. In the darkness of a hut-interior, however, they find their complete justification. First comes a polite request from me, or from Mr. Knudsen, to the owner, for permission to inspect his domain, which is granted with equal politeness. This is followed by an eager search through the rooms and compartments of which, to my surprise, the dwellings here are composed. These are not elegant, such a notion being as yet wholly foreign to the native consciousness; but they give unimpeachable testimony to the inmates’ mode of life. In the centre, midway between the two doors is the kitchen with the hearth and the most indispensable household implements and stores. The hearth is simplicity itself: three stones the size of a man’s head, or perhaps only lumps of earth from an ant-heap, are placed at an angle of 120° to each other. On these, surrounded by other pots, the great earthen pot, with the inevitable ugali, rests over the smouldering fire. Lying about among them are ladles, or spoons, and “spurtles” for stirring the porridge. Over the fireplace, and well within reach of the smoke, is a stage constructed out of five or six forked poles. On the cross-sticks are laid heads of millet in close, uniform rows, and under them, like the sausages in the smoke-room of a German farmhouse, hang a great number of the largest and finest cobs of maize, by this time covered with a shining layer of soot. If this does not protect them from insects, nothing else will; for such is the final end and aim of the whole process. In the temperate regions of Europe, science may be concerned with preserving the seed-corn in a state capable of germination till sowing-time; but here, in tropical Africa, with its all-penetrating damp, its all-devouring insect and other destroyers, and, finally, its want of suitable and permanent building material, this saving of the seed is an art of practical utility. It will be one, and not the least welcome, of my tasks, to study this art thoroughly in all its details.

As to the economy of these natives, their struggle with the recalcitrant nature of the country, and their care for the morrow, I am waiting to express an opinion till I shall have gained fuller experience. In the literature dealing with ethnology and national economy, we have a long series of works devoted to the classification of mankind according to the forms and stages of their economic life. It is a matter of course that we occupy the highest stage; all authors are agreed on one point, that we have taken out a lease of civilization in all its departments. As to the arrangement of the other races and nations, no two authors are agreed. The text-books swarm with barbarous and half-barbarous peoples, with settled and nomadic, hunter, shepherd, and fisher tribes, migratory and collecting tribes. One group carries on its economic arts on a basis of tradition, another on that of innate instinct, finally, we have even an animal stage of economics. If all these classifications are thrown into a common receptacle, the result is a dish with many ingredients, but insipid as a whole. Its main constituent is a profound contempt for those whom we may call the “nature-peoples.”[^[15]] These books produce the impression that the negro, for instance, lives direct from hand to mouth, and in his divine carelessness takes no thought even for to-day, much less for to-morrow morning.

The reality is quite otherwise, here and elsewhere, but here in an especial degree. In Northern Germany, the modern intensive style of farming is characterized by the barns irregularly distributed over the fields, and in quite recent times by the corn-stacks, both of which, since the introduction of the movable threshing-machine, have made the old barn at the homestead well-nigh useless. Here the farming differs only in degree, not in principle; here, too, miniature barns are irregularly scattered over the shambas, or gardens; while other food-stores which surprise us by their number and size are found close to and in the homestead. If we examine the interior of the house with a light, we find in all its compartments large earthen jars, hermetically sealed with clay, containing ground-nuts, peas, beans, and the like, and neatly-made bark cylinders, about a yard long, also covered with clay and well caulked, for holding maize, millet and other kinds of grain. All these receptacles, both outdoor and indoor, are placed to protect them from insects, rodents and damp, on racks or platforms of wood and bamboo, from fifteen inches to two feet high, plastered with clay, and resting on stout, forked poles. The outdoor food-stores are often of considerable dimensions. They resemble gigantic mushrooms, with their thatched roofs projecting far beyond the bamboo or straw structure, which is always plastered with mud inside and out. Some have a door in their circumference after the fashion of our cylindrical iron stoves; others have no opening whatever, and if the owner wishes to take out the contents, he has to tilt the roof on one side. For this purpose he has to ascend a ladder of the most primitive construction—a couple of logs, no matter how crooked, with slips of bamboo lashed across them a yard apart. I cannot sketch these appliances without a smile, yet, in spite of their primitive character, they show a certain gift of technical invention.

The keeping of pigeons is to us Europeans a very pleasing feature in the village economy of these parts. Almost every homestead we visit has one or more dovecotes, very different from ours, and yet well suited to their purpose. The simplest form is a single bark cylinder, made by stripping the bark whole from the section of a moderately thick tree. The ends are fastened up with sticks or flat stones, a hole is cut in the middle for letting the birds in and out, and the box is fastened at a height of some five or six feet above the ground, or hung up (but this is not so common) like a swinging bar on a stand made for the purpose. This last arrangement is particularly safe, as affording no access to vermin. As the birds multiply, the owner adds cylinder to cylinder till they form a kind of wall. Towards sunset, he or his wife approaches the dovecote, greeted by a friendly cooing from inside, picks up from the ground a piece of wood cut to the right size, and closes the opening of the first bark box with it, doing the same to all the others in turn, and then leaves them for the night, secure that no wild cat or other marauder can reach them.

DOVECOTE AND GRANARY

I have found out within the last few days why so few men are to be seen in my rounds. The settlements here scarcely deserve the name of villages—they are too straggling for that; it is only now and then that from one hut one can catch a distant glimpse of another. The view is also obstructed by the fields of manioc, whose branches, though very spreading, are not easily seen through on account of the thickly-growing, succulent green foliage. This and the bazi pea are, now that the maize and millet have been gathered in, the only crops left standing in the fields. Thus it may happen that one has to trust entirely to the trodden paths leading from one hut to another, to be sure of missing none, or to the guidance of the sounds inseparable from every human settlement. There is no lack of such noises at Masasi, and in fact I follow them almost every day. Walking about the country with Nils Knudsen, I hear what sounds like a jovial company over their morning drink—voices becoming louder and louder, and shouting all together regardless of parliamentary rules. A sudden turn of the path brings us face to face with a drinking-party, and a very merry one, indeed, to judge by the humour of the guests and the number and dimensions of the pombe pots which have been wholly or partially emptied. The silence which follows our appearance is like that produced by a stone thrown into a pool where frogs are croaking. Only when we ask, “Pombe nzuri?” (“Is the beer good?”) a chorus of hoarse throats shouts back the answer—“Nzuri kabisa, bwana!” (“Very good indeed, sir!”)

As to this pombe—well, we Germans fail to appreciate our privileges till we have ungratefully turned our backs on our own country. At Mtua, our second camp out from Lindi, a huge earthen jar of the East African brew was brought as a respectful offering to us three Europeans. At that time I failed to appreciate the dirty-looking drab liquid; not so our men, who finished up the six gallons or so in a twinkling. In Masasi, again, the wife of the Nyasa chief Masekera Matola—an extremely nice, middle-aged woman—insisted on sending Knudsen and me a similar gigantic jar soon after our arrival. We felt that it was out of the question to refuse or throw away the gift, and so prepared for the ordeal with grim determination. First I dipped one of my two tumblers into the turbid mass, and brought it up filled with a liquid in colour not unlike our Lichtenhain beer, but of a very different consistency. A compact mass of meal filled the glass almost to the top, leaving about a finger’s breadth of real, clear “Lichtenhainer.” “This will never do!” I growled, and shouted to Kibwana for a clean handkerchief. He produced one, after a seemingly endless search, but my attempts to use it as a filter were fruitless—not a drop would run through. “No use, the stuff is too closely woven. Lete sanda, Kibwana” (“Bring a piece of the shroud!”) This order sounds startling enough, but does not denote any exceptional callousness on my part. Sanda is the Swahili name for the cheap, unbleached and highly-dressed calico (also called bafta) which, as a matter of fact, is generally used by the natives to wrap a corpse for burial. The material is consequently much in demand, and travellers into the interior will do well to carry a bale of it with them. When the dressing is washed out, it is little better than a network of threads, and might fairly be expected to serve the purpose of a filter.

I found, however, that I could not strain the pombe through it—a few scanty drops ran down and that was all. After trying my tea and coffee-strainers, equally in vain, I gave up in despair, and drank the stuff as it stood. I found that it had a slight taste of flour, but was otherwise not by any means bad, and indeed quite reminiscent of my student days at Jena—in fact, I think I could get used to it in time. The men of Masasi seem to have got only too well used to it. I am far from grudging the worthy elders their social glass after the hard work of the harvest, but it is very hard that my studies should suffer from this perpetual conviviality. It is impossible to drum up any considerable number of men to be cross-examined on their tribal affinities, usages and customs. Moreover, the few who can reconcile it with their engagements and inclinations to separate themselves for a time from their itinerant drinking-bouts are not disposed to be very particular about the truth. Even when, the other day, I sent for a band of these jolly topers to show me their methods of basketmaking, the result was very unsatisfactory—they did some plaiting in my presence, but they were quite incapable of giving in detail the native names of their materials and implements—the morning drink had been too copious.

It is well known that it is the custom of most, if not all, African tribes to make a part of their supply of cereals into beer after an abundant harvest, and consume it wholesale in this form. This, more than anything else, has probably given rise to the opinion that the native always wastes his substance in time of plenty, and is nearly starved afterwards in consequence. It is true that our black friends cannot be pronounced free from a certain degree of “divine carelessness”—a touch, to call it no more, of Micawberism—but it would not be fair to condemn them on the strength of a single indication. I have already laid stress on the difficulty which the native cultivator has of storing his seed-corn through the winter. It would be still more difficult to preserve the much greater quantities of foodstuffs gathered in at the harvest in a condition fit for use through some eight or nine months. That he tries to do so is seen by the numerous granaries surrounding every homestead of any importance, but that he does not invariably succeed, and therefore prefers to dispose of that part of his crops which would otherwise be wasted in a manner combining the useful and the agreeable, is proved by the morning and evening beer-drinks already referred to, which, with all their loud merriment, are harmless enough. They differ, by the bye, from the drinking in European public-houses, in that they are held at each man’s house in turn, so that every one is host on one occasion and guest on another—a highly satisfactory arrangement on the whole.

My difficulties are due to other causes besides the chronically bemused state of the men. In the first place, there are the troubles connected with photography. In Europe the amateur is only too thankful for bright sunshine, and even should the light be a little more powerful than necessary, there is plenty of shade to be had from trees and houses. In Africa we have nothing of the sort—the trees are neither high nor shady, the bushes are not green, and the houses are never more than twelve feet high at the ridge-pole. To this is added the sun’s position in the sky at a height which affects one with a sense of uncanniness, from nine in the morning till after three in the afternoon, and an intensity of light which is best appreciated by trying to match the skins of the natives against the colours in Von Luschan’s scale. No medium between glittering light and deep black shadow—how is one, under such circumstances, to produce artistic plates full of atmosphere and feeling?

For a dark-room I have been trying to use the Masasi boma. This is the only stone building in the whole district and has been constructed for storing food so as to prevent the recurrence of famine among the natives, and, still more, to make the garrison independent of outside supplies in the event of another rising. It has only one story, but the walls are solidly built, with mere loopholes for windows; and the flat roof of beaten clay is very strong. In this marvel of architecture are already stacked uncounted bags containing millet from the new crop, and mountains of raw cotton. I have made use of both these products, stopping all crevices with the cotton, and taking the bags of grain to sit on, and also as a support for my table, hitherto the essential part of a cotton-press which stands forsaken in the compound, mourning over the shipwreck it has made of its existence. Finally, I have closed the door with a combination of thick straw mats made by my carriers, and some blankets from my bed. In this way, I can develop at a pinch even in the daytime, but, after working a short time in this apartment, the atmosphere becomes so stifling that I am glad to escape from it to another form of activity.

RAT TRAP

On one of my first strolls here, I came upon a neat structure which was explained to me as “tego ya ngunda”—a trap for pigeons. This is a system of sticks and thin strings, one of which is fastened to a strong branch bent over into a half-circle. I have been, from my youth up, interested in all mechanical contrivances, and am still more so in a case like this, where we have an opportunity of gaining an insight into the earlier evolutional stages of the human intellect. I therefore, on my return to camp, called together all my men and as many local natives as possible, and addressed the assembly to the effect that the mzungu was exceedingly anxious to possess all kinds of traps for all kinds of animals. Then followed the promise of good prices for good and authentic specimens, and the oration wound up with “Nendeni na tengenezeni sasa!” (“Now go away and make up your contraptions!”).

How they hurried off that day, and how eagerly all my men have been at work ever since! I had hitherto believed all my carriers to be Wanyamwezi—now I find, through the commentaries which each of them has to supply with his work, that my thirty men represent a number of different tribes. Most of them, to be sure, are Wanyamwezi, but along with them there are some Wasukuma and Manyema, and even a genuine Mngoni from Runsewe, a representative of that gallant Zulu tribe who, some decades ago, penetrated from distant South Africa to the present German territory, and pushed forward one of its groups—these very Runsewe Wangoni—as far as the south-western corner of the Victoria Nyanza. As for the askari, though numbering only thirteen, they belong to no fewer than twelve different tribes, from those of far Darfur in the Egyptian Sudan to the Yao in Portuguese East Africa. All these “faithfuls” have been racking their brains to recall and practise once more in wood and field the arts of their boyhood, and now they come and set up, in the open, sunny space beside my palatial abode, the results of their unwonted intellectual exertions.