MY FIRST SETTLEMENT ON KILIMA-NJARO.
Very early in the morning of the succeeding day—the second after our
arrival in Moši—I began to prepare for the last stage of my journey, the
search for a suitable site on which to establish my principal and
central collecting-station. Various considerations must influence me in
my selection. Firstly, it must not be too low down on the mountain, so
as to be inconveniently far from my collecting-grounds; secondly, it
must not be too high up or my men would suffer unduly from cold, and we
should induce no natives to bring their food supplies for sale. Again, I
did not wish to build too near Mandara’s court in case that monarch
should honour us with an inconvenient amount of his society, and always
have me at his beck and call; on the other hand, if I journeyed too far
into the wilderness I lost the protection Mandara was able to accord me
and would, consequently, nullify the object of my settlement in Moši,
which was to be enabled to pursue my avocations quietly and economically
by living with a very few followers under the ægis of a powerful prince.
I, therefore, after long consultation of the imperfect map, decided that
a certain prominent spur of the mountain in the north-east of Mandara’s
country (overlooking the bed of a rivulet) would best answer my purpose
for a secure and pleasant settlement. After experience showed me that
this almost accidental choice would have been a strangely fortunate one,
and had I made a permanent residence in Mandara’s country, I should have
eventually built there. But on my indicating this selection to the chief
on my arrival, I could see that it met with his secret disapproval. He
really feared that in establishing myself on this distant spot I should
be too independent of his caprices. Yet he did not countermand it, but
merely nodded and said enigmatically, “We shall see—kešo, kešo” (_kešo_!
fatal word = ‘to-morrow’). However, I was determined to show him that I
intended to have my own way. Accordingly, I prepared actively for
departure on the morrow. I thought it ominous that no guides or message
came from Mandara’s court, but I, nevertheless, affected not to notice
this, and gave the order cheerfully to shoulder loads and march. Only
thirty men—the Zanzibaris—responded. The Rabai porters sat sullen and
immovable, and raised not a finger to their loads. I asked them if they
had understood me. “Perfectly,” they said, “but Mandara had given them
orders not to move.” “But,” I exclaimed, “_I_ am your master, _I_ pay
you, and I command you to take up your loads and follow me to the last
stage of the journey.” “What do we care for your commands?” they
replied. “Why Mandara could kill us all in a moment, and who could
resist him? And you—why you daren’t even beat us, because you know we
should tell the missionaries.” This was indeed bitterness for me,
especially the feeling that I was impotent to harm these wretches.
Unfortunately, they had all received the greater part of their wages in
advance, and had carefully stored up their dollars before quitting the
coast, so that the threat of depriving them of the small remainder of
their pay, if they failed to complete the contract, had little effect.
Mandara, it appears, had tried to cajole and frighten the Zanzibaris
into joining the strike, but these true-hearted Mussulmen had informed
him that they had but one master and that the white man, and him only
would they obey—an answer for which Mandara ever afterwards bore them a
grudge. I therefore in my difficulty turned to them for counsel.
Kiongwe, the head-man, whose experience under Stanley had made him a
reliable adviser, proposed a daring solution of the quandary, namely,
that he should proceed forthwith to Mandara’s, present him my salaams,
and inform him I was now ready to start, and waiting only for the
promised guide. On this errand he went, and found Mandara in the best of
humours, and apparently grieved to hear of the mutiny in my camp, though
his one eye twinkled as he said so.
A compromise was arrived at. Kiongwe was informed that I was _free_ to
go wherever I chose, but that Mandara _advised_ me to select the site
which his delegates would show me. As I had a hundred loads and only
thirty men willing to carry them, I had better put my goods under his
charge, and he would take care of them until they could be removed in
instalments to the selected site. I was rueful when Kiongwe returned and
communicated the result of his interview, because I felt how utterly I
had placed myself in Mandara’s power. Moreover, I dreaded lest the
proposed “taking charge of my goods” were not a pretext for exacting a
huge ransom. However, I submitted to fate, and after events showed me
that I had misjudged Mandara. The site he had selected for my settlement
was not quite equal to the one I would have preferred, as regards
natural history purposes, but it was not far removed in distance, and
certainly had many peculiar advantages. As to the goods placed under
Mandara’s care, I can only say they were made over to me absolutely
intact.
Nevertheless, not foreknowing the happy termination of my troubles, it
was with a somewhat anxious heart that I accompanied my thirty
Zanzibaris, following as speedily as possible Mandara’s nimble soldiers.
These, our guides, sped along in front, skipping uphill like goats, and
making nothing of the slippery, clayey descents, slimy with recent
showers, where _we_ had carefully to walk sideways to avoid a headlong
tumble. But these glissades were only accidents along the winding track;
our general direction was upwards. We left the spur on which Mandara’s
residences stand, wound along a little artificial watercourse which
irrigated the chief’s banana plantations, then attacked a very steep
hill-side, up which we clambered almost on all fours, clutching at grass
tufts by the way, stopped to breathe under the spreading branches of
some magnificent acacia-trees, where the bold, grey monkeys peered at us
wonderingly with their blue faces, and ducked their heads and chattered
at our ugliness; again mounted up, up, up, till our knees grew palsied,
and our chests ached; passed through rich hedges of glossy-leaved
dracœnas, pink-flowered aloes, spreading fern-fronds and fruiting
brambles, turned the corner sharply, and entered on a less fatiguing
portion of our route.
How charming was the journey now before us! After such a tiring ascent,
wherein we were nearly compelled to relapse into our pristine mode of
locomotion—in fact to imitate those great baboons who scampered away
from us on all fours up the lanes, disturbed in their raids on the
banana clusters; we were now able to stroll at our ease, though such was
the exhilaration of the scene, and the freshness of the morning air,
that I skipped and tripped, childlike, along the level path. And such a
path! Like a tiny towing-track it followed a Lilliputian canal, cut
along an artificial channel in the hill-side, or, to express it more
clearly, diverted from the parent-stream before the hill was a hill in a
far-off valley, and now pursuing its tranquil course and gentle descent
along the swelling bosom of the mountain, while the original rivulet
descended below in wasteful cascades. Both path and irrigating channel
hung seemingly in mid-air, jutting out from the mountain-side with a
thousand feet of tree-choked ravine below and five hundred feet of
bracken-covered hill above. Therefore, as we marched along so gaily, we
looked down on the velvety tops of the bushy trees with which the sheer
descent of rock and fern was studded, and up through the wide,
orange-tinted bracken fronds at the bright green banana groves that
crested the summit of the hill. Then we rounded the prettiest little
clump of woodland imaginable, pushed out like an ornamental shelf or
bracket from the wall of hill, and positively suspended over the green
gulf below. This, indeed, was a “hanging-wood,” and I almost hesitated
at first to follow the path that hung upon its edge, fearing lest the
weight of our passing troop might break down the border that supported
path and stream, and send us tumbling into the valley beneath. But this
was a danger more fanciful than real, for the ledge was firmly
buttressed underneath by the strong roots of the forest-trees clinging
to the rock. As we skirted this great ravine we arrived at a point where
it narrowed, and where the difference between valley and hill was less.
Here the little rivulet, which farther on its course lay a thousand feet
below, was on a level with the path, and here it was made to give birth
by careful damming to artificial canals, which started away on either
side to irrigate the terraced hill-plantations with their sluggish flow.
Where we crossed the pretty stream was in a shady hollow. It had
expanded to a shimmering pool; large sycamore fig-trees with spatulate
leaves rose above its banks. Tall arums, with pale yellow
flower-sheaths, and untidy Isolepis grasses, whose heads of streaming
filaments looked like green mops, studded its flattened banks, and we
jumped in a few seconds from stone to stone across its shallow flow,
crossing at the same time both stream and valley, and finding ourselves
commencing the ascent of the opposite hill, and, but that we now had the
widening gorge between us, seemingly retracing our steps to Mandara’s
town. His little beehive huts, on which we had hitherto turned our
backs, now reappeared behind the shoulder of the opposite hill, but when
our climb was done lay more than a thousand feet below us. Here we had
reached our destination.
[Illustration:
VIEW OF MANDARA’S VILLAGE FROM KITIMBIRIU.
To face page 119.
]
There are numberless spurs or buttresses of the parent-mountain on the
southern side of Kilima-njaro. Some are bold, serrated, and abrupt; some
are rounded and nearly flattened on the top. On one of these Mandara’s
residence is placed, on another, of more imposing height, I was about to
build; and there are yet others, and others, and others, stretching out
westward and eastward into the great plain below. Each one of these
spreading buttresses is separated from its neighbours by a ravine,
which, as you ascend it, will gradually narrow and narrow until it
disappears, and the two diverging spurs of the mountain converge into
the parent mass, so that the general effect of Kilima-njaro from the
south would suggest a tree-trunk poised on its spreading roots. In each
ravine there is a rivulet, and along the crest of each buttress, or it
may be somewhat to the side, meanders an artificially-trained stream,
diverted from the rivulet at some higher fountain or waterfall, and
carried in a gentle descent along the brow of the hill. This, of course,
is the handiwork of man, but so industrious have been at varying times
the Bantu inhabitants of Kilima-njaro, that there is scarcely a spur
descending from the southern base of the mountain that is unprovided
with the irrigating channel—or, it may be, three or four channels at
different elevations—running along its sloping crest or flanks, and
keeping its terraced gardens supplied with water. In those parts where
wars have devastated the country, and where the hills are no longer
cultivated or inhabited, these former runnels of water still remain,
although from want of care the channels may have dried up and become
turfed over.
[Illustration:
Fig. 28.—Head and Shoulders of our Cow.
]
In half an hour I had fixed on the site for my settlement, and remained
there alone to guard the first instalment of my goods while my men
returned to bring the rest. By the end of the afternoon everything had
safely arrived, and for the first time during many weeks I knew what it
was to be free from care, and be able to enjoy an afternoon of idleness.
I no longer cared now whether the men of Rabai ran away or not. My goods
were safely landed at my destination, my wearying tramp over wold and
fell, sharp rocks and scorching sand, was at an end, and I was free to
rest with the satisfaction of finding that my brightest anticipations of
Kilima-njaro scenery were realized. No more desperate marches after
water, only to find it hidden away in the crevices of lofty hills.
There, alongside of me, in front of me, as I sat in my deck-chair on the
broad brow of the hill, swirled the water in its artificial channel,
brought by man’s patient ingenuity to keep us company in our eyrie. A
little way off me lay my men, their work for the day concluded. They had
with happy abandonment thrown themselves down on the sweet turf, lying
half somnolent in fragrant beds of mint and clover, crushing with their
dead weight many a delicate ground-orchid or purple-red dissotis. The
tent had been pitched, and the cook’s fire was sending up a little
column of smoke, which stood out bluish-white against the green
background of the rising hill-side. A goat and kid, a cow and calf,
presents from Mandara, munched peacefully the rank grass round the
bushes, but save for the occasional smothered tearing noise they made
when cropping the herbage, and except the desultory conversation between
the two cooks, no sound broke the dreamy silence. By a thoughtful order
of Mandara’s, no native was allowed to visit my encampment the first day
of our arrival, so that, until we had got all our goods safely stored,
there might be no temptation to steal. Consequently my attention was
undistracted, and totally given to the examination of my new
surroundings.
The site of my first settlement on Kilima-njaro lay about two miles to
the north-east of the capital of Moši (in latitude 3° 17′ 30″ S., and
longitude 37° 25′ E.), on the brow of a fine hill nearly 5000 feet above
the sea; but, of course, not much elevated above the surrounding
country. On either side yawned a deep ravine, with a stream flowing
through in its depths; but at the back the hill, which was only one of
the many spurs of the mountain-side, joined the parent mass, and might
thus be easily approached without much serious climbing. It would have
been a splendid site for a city, and, indeed—who knows?—may be some day.
I sometimes amuse myself by thinking that when—as it must be sooner or
later—Kilima-njaro is colonized by a superior race, and fair cities
spring up on its breezy heights, some of them may arise from the
original sites of my various stations, and when they look back with
complacency on their prosperous career and some aspiring archivist
starts to write their history from its earliest commencement, my
insignificance may be rescued from utter oblivion as the first
inhabitant and the pristine architect of their foundation. Perhaps in
the city museum may be preserved some curious relics of my stay—a
champagne-bottle, a petroleum-tin, or an empty jar that once contained
arsenical soap; and in the municipal library, perhaps even a copy of
this book may be found, in which the passages descriptive of the city’s
ancient site may be eagerly discussed and quoted. In the interest, then,
of a possible futurity, I will complete the history of my settlement in
Moši, the native name of which was “Kitimbiriu.” On the summit of this
elongated hill—_colline_, or “little neck,” is a French name which
describes it well—was a nearly level and broad plateau, three sides of
which descended almost precipitously into the valleys below. With a very
little work it might have been made unapproachable save from the north,
where it joined on to higher ground. Along one side and then across and
down the other side flowed a tiny artificial canal of clear water
brought from a tumbling stream higher up the mountain, and carried along
this hill from above in a very gently descending channel. Thus we had
water at our very door, and needed not to seek it in the ravine a
thousand feet below. It seemed so strange and quaint to find a placid
brooklet flowing along high ground up in the clouds and at the edge of a
precipice. All this was due to the patient industry of the Wa-čaga of
Kilima-njaro, who prefer to live on the tops of hills for safety, and
therefore carry their water in artificial channels from the heights
above, and make it flow the whole length of these inhabited spurs, while
the parent streams go dashing down the valleys, descending in cascades
of 70 and 100 feet, till they flow far, far below the placid canals
which water the hill-crests stretching out into the plains.
[Illustration:
Fig. 29.—A View towards Mačame.
]
In the centre of my settlement a large and spreading tree gave a
pleasant shade in the warm noonday, and further sheltered my habitations
from the occasional high winds; and lastly—and this, I suppose, no
afterwork of man can alter—the view to be obtained from this site was
almost unequalled in Čaga. “All the world,” said Mandara once, “can be
seen from your windows;” and though, of course, it was not a strictly
true assertion, it was plausible when uttered in view of such a splendid
expanse of country—such a veritable map of Eastern Africa as might be
seen from Kitimbiriu. The two snow-peaks of Kibô and Kimawenzi rose
above us to the north. Looking westward we might gaze over the whole
belt of inhabited country as far as Mačame, near the great western
shoulder of Kilima-njaro, which stretches towards Méru. Many a
forest-crowned hill intervened; and in the foreground the scenery was a
bewildering maze of banana plantations in their glinting, vivid green,
of maize-fields, of patches of red and freshly turned-up soil, and dark
purple blots, which were isolated trees left standing in the cultivated
land. Then there were the bare, sheep-cropped downs forming stretches of
pale green colour, and the hill-sides clothed with feathery bracken,
which at the season of my arrival (June) was dried to a vivid yellow.
All these varied tones, too crude and startling in the foreground,
became harmonized into a beautiful green and purple patchwork in the
middle distance, and faded away near the horizon into a calm and tender
violet, broken here and there by the blue puffs of smoke which
everywhere mark the inhabited zone; for the natives of Čaga are
perpetually clearing the land of weeds and burning the refuse in great
bonfires to fertilize the soil with the ashes.
[Illustration:
Fig. 30.
A View towards Ugweno.
]
Southward and eastward I looked across to the beautiful blue hills of
Ugweno,[15] at the base of which lies Lake ǰipé. The lake cannot be seen
from the elevation of Kitimbiriu, but mount a thousand feet higher and
you will descry it like an oblong mirror at the base of the purple
hills.
[Illustration:
Fig. 31.—Mount Méru.
]
But in all this range of view there was no grander object for the eyes
to rest on—scarcely excepting the snowy dome of Kibô—than Méru, the
grandest mountain in symmetrical shape that Africa can boast. It rises,
a perfect pyramid, to the west of Kilima-njaro, and springs heavenward
from the sunny plain till it reaches a height of nearly 15,000 feet.[16]
I wish I could paint it for you as I saw it at the close of this
tranquil afternoon when I lay resting and awaiting my dinner on the
hill-top of Kitimbiriu. Imagine, first, a western sky of clear, pale
gold, deepening into orange just close to the horizon. Over this hangs
in the upper heaven a thin sheet of greyish purple cloud, semi-opaque,
semi-transparent, letting a little of the warm ground show through,
sharp edged, and so disposed at a slight angle as to appear like the
border of a dusky curtain prepared to drop over the scene. This foil
enhances the vivid glory of the golden belt which stretches across the
sky. Then out of a serrated horizon of unimportant peaks and cones rises
the clear, dark blue pyramid of Méru, its outline just a little tampered
with by Nature, so that it may not be rendered too formal. The summit is
slightly flattened, and on the right side a jagged notch breaks the
uniformity of its long northern slope. The accidental effect of colour
is as beautiful as anything. Seen by this light there is no subtle
interweaving of tints. The whole mass of Méru is one clear tone of dark
grey-blue, and the brilliant band of sky behind is an unvaried positive
gold. Just to break the almost decorative look the formal contrast
bears, there is one faint, delicate smear of cloud stretching right
across the upper half of mountain and sky. Méru is cut off from the
middle distance by a long, undulating, purple line marking the farthest
westward spur of Kilima-njaro. The centre of the picture is a rich,
dusky-green plain, interwoven with lines of purple and brown to mark the
distant clumps of forest bordering the river-course. In the more distant
foreground stretch out the nearer buttresses of Kilima-njaro, long lines
of hillocks, crested with occasional umbrageous trees, but more often
clothed with banana groves of pale, pure green. These interwoven lines
of hill stretch upwards from the vague obscurity of the middle distance
till they culminate in the great simple shoulder of the down rising
across our ravine. This is a plain grassy slope with white goats
browsing on it, but in the immediate foreground it is dropping into the
more misty depths of the widening gorge over whose purple abyss soar and
wheel in high relief a few brown vultures.
[Illustration:
Fig. 32.—A Kite.
]
It was most delightful thus to look forth from my eyrie on the many
lands spread before me as on a huge and living map, and also to feel
that I was safe from all attack on the part of the lawless rovers of the
plains. My gaze stretched away, even into parts of Africa that are
unknown and unvisited of white men, and I could scan the natural
features of these countries at a glance, and correct the disposition of
their rivers and mountain ranges on the map. Sometimes, when the partial
mists rose over the nearer hills and valleys, and the brow of my hill
seemed to be an island floating in the air, the effect was a most
pleasing and novel one. I, my men, my huts, and my domestic animals
seemed to be sailing over Africa in a giant balloon. Below us, beyond
the mists, were the sunlit plains, the lines of velvet forest bordering
the winding streams, the stretches of open pasture-land like lakes of
grass, green amid the darker forest and the purple hills. Then, at our
feet, rolling clouds of grey vapour, and, standing out in strong relief
against this vacuous background, the soaring kites who wheeled and
poised with outspread pinions just below my feet, seeming like the birds
which accompanied Solomon when he flew through the air on his magic
carpet, as the Arab legends tell us.
Throughout the four months of my residence in Kitimbiriu the beauties of
the scenery never palled and never grew monotonous. With such varied
atmospheric agencies the effects around us changed like the designs of a
kaleidoscope, and rarely came two alike. Sometimes, perhaps at early
dawn, everything would be veiled in blank mist, save only the summit of
Kibô, and this would gleam out above the clouds, like some supernatural
vision, rosy in the effulgence of the coming dawn. Or, it might be, in
the noontide every trace of vapour would have vanished, and the velvet
forest lie glowing in gold-green light and dusky purple shadows, every
detail strongly marked, while the precipices, jutting rocks, and shining
_nevées_ of Kibô were discernible with startling clearness, though the
peak lay distant nearly fifteen miles. In the afternoon, perhaps, the
sky was hung with dense curtains of purple-grey cloud, and the plain
below lay in monotonous blue shadow; only away to the west, behind the
pyramid of Méru, the heavens exhibited one clear, cloudless belt, which
the descending sun turned to refulgent gold, and against this relief, as
on some antique illumination or decorative design, the peak of Méru and
the jagged hill-tops at its base would stand out in a simple tone of
indigo.
On the morning succeeding my arrival I had little leisure for observing
the scenery, although I felt in high spirits and very much the better
for my long, dreamy, restful afternoon of the day before, spent idly in
the contemplation of the matchless landscapes round me. Perhaps for this
reason I was inclined to relent in my just wrath against the Rabai
porters, and pay them the remainder of their wages and let them go. Or
it may have been a message from Mandara, asking me to overlook their
mutiny of the day before, and send them back to the coast with their
money and food allowance, which decided me to this act of forgiveness,
for such powerful advocacy was not to be slighted. Accordingly these
creatures were summoned from Mandara’s village, ranged in line by my
Zanzibaris, and received their “chits,” or slips of paper, which they
were to present for payment to the Consul on the coast. On each “chit”
was written the amount of the man’s wages, _minus_ fines for
misbehaviour, or _plus_ a present for well-doing. Further, perhaps, was
a line or two of writing to serve as a “character,” good or bad, as the
case may be, which Captain Gissing, when he payed them at Mombasa, would
doubtless enlarge into a stern upbraiding or kindly commendation. I
fear, however, from what I remember of these men, that he would have
been more occupied in rebuking than commending, for a worse stamp of men
than the Rabai porters I have rarely met with in Africa, and I think
most other travellers’ experience is the same. Their first evangelist,
Krapf, describes them in despair as a “crooked and indifferent
generation of heathens,” and although the generation of which he wrote
may have passed away, the one to which it has given place amply
illustrates the principle of heredity by perpetuating with increased
force the ancestral badness.
It was with considerable relief that I dismissed them from my settlement
in Čaga and turned to my faithful Zanzibaris, who were setting to work
with bright activity to make our little colony inhabitable. Twenty of
these Zanzibaris were allowed to lie by and rest, for I intended to send
them shortly back to Taita to fetch the goods there left behind in the
missionary’s house, when so many of the Wa-rabai deserted; but of the
remaining twelve, each man received his appointed task. Abdallah was
made supervisor of the working men; Mabruki and Athmani were already
engaged in drying plants and skinning birds under my tuition; Faraǰi and
Cephas were building a kitchen; Ibrahim was sent with Baher, Fariǰala,
and Mwali Mnyani to take spades and clear the site for my house;
Abdallah bin Saleh was to cut grass and attend to the goat and cow; Mguu
collected firewood for the cooks; while, most important task of all, to
Kadu Stanley was given the post of gardener—he had to dig up a piece of
soil, divide it into neat plots, sow it with my English seeds, and hedge
it round about with a sturdy palisade. The day succeeding my arrival I
had already put into my kitchen-garden the seeds of mustard and cress,
radishes, turnips, carrots, onions, tomatoes, borage, sage, cucumbers,
and melons; and at the end of my first week in Čaga, I was already
eating a salad of my own growing.
We did not, however, sink at once into this life of quiet colonization.
During the first few days of my stay I was much annoyed by continual
visits from Mandara’s parasites; wretched bankrupt Swahili traders or
runaway slaves, who had taken refuge with the chief of Moši from their
creditors or owners; and, in the sense that a one-eyed man is king
amongst the blind, so this rascality of the coast quite lorded it over
the simple savage, and affected to consider itself on a par with the
white man. From the first time, however, that I met them on the road to
Čaga, when they were sent to welcome me to Mandara’s country. I felt it
would be a struggle for supremacy between us. They were secretly enraged
at my coming, fearing to lose their influence over the fickle chief, and
seeing much hindrance to the slave-trade, which they, the ex-slaves,
were so profitably organizing. Accordingly, from the very first they
sought to thwart me, and, without resorting to any overt act of malice,
intended to render my stay in the country impossible. Before I had
barely occupied my settlement a day they began making constant visits to
my tent, coolly demanding this and that article in the name of Mandara.
At first I simply declined, but, after one or two refusals, their
ringleader, an ape-like, shrunken man, marked with small-pox, said in a
threatening tone, “I tell you what, young man (kiǰana), if you are not
more generous, you will never be able to stop here.” I immediately
seized my stick, and jumped after him; but he had gathered up his skirts
and fled, followed by his companions. At this juncture there was but one
course to be pursued. I called to me two or three of my men, took my
walking-stick, and started on the road to Mandara’s house. Arriving at
his village green, I saw his Swahili parasites lolling about, some of
them affecting to play with much interest a game like “draughts,” called
_bao_, although I saw them watching me out of the corners of their eyes.
All, however, studiously remained indifferent to my approach, and for a
second I paused, irresolute as to how I should announce myself to the
chief. Then I called to the nearest man, who was stooping over one of
the _bao_ players, and told him quietly to go and tell Mandara I desired
an interview. He kept his back turned to me, shrugged his shoulders, and
smiled scornfully at his comrades. My temper rose, but, apart from this,
I knew these curs only cringe to force. I raised my stick, and brought
it down with a sounding thwack on the shoulders of the inattentive man.
“Now,” I said, “you pig, you slave, go and tell the chief I have come to
say good-bye.” He looked startled and hurried off. Presently I was
summoned by a Čaga warrior to approach, but before I reached the hedge
of dracœnas that bounded Mandara’s enclosure the chief himself came
striding to meet me, not, as I had nerved myself to meet him, with
knitted brows and sullen scowl, but with a charming smile and beaming
face. Taking both my hands in his outstretched palms, he said, “What!
has my white man come to see me already? How good! Now we must have a
chat. Bring a seat there, and a cup of ‘tembo.’” This winning manner
quite altered the tone of my feelings, and, after such graciousness, I
felt that peevish complaints sounded very ill from my mouth. However, I
braced myself to the disagreeable task, and told him resolutely that I
must leave if any further demand for presents was made. “You know,
Mandara, I am a poor man. The Wa-alimu (wise men) of Ulaya have not
provided me with many goods. I cannot afford to give you constant gifts.
If you really want me to build here and live in your country, you must
leave off asking me for presents.”
Mandara, at these words, looked around on all present with well-acted
astonishment. His one bright eye grew sad and perplexed under his
knitted brow, as he said, “What is the white man saying? I don’t
understand. Why does he want to go?” My men then told him, with averted
looks and in tones of deepest respect, that the white man was offended
because Mandara’s Swahilis came asking for frequent gifts for their
chief. “Oh, is that all?” said Mandara, who had of course instigated the
whole affair, and had sent these men to sound me gently, and see if I
was of a generous and yielding temperament. “These men don’t know what
they are saying; they should converse with the white man’s servants, not
with him. But,” he said, “we are wasting our time over little
words—_manéno madogo_. Between the white man and Mandara only great
affairs should be treated of, or else general and light conversation
(zumgumzo). I am Sultan here, am I not?” (An eager and hurried assent on
every one’s part.) “And this is the Baloza’s child. Let him settle here
in peace, and not concern himself with the conversation of slaves.” Here
he affected to scowl at the Wa-swahili, who bore all this tirade very
stolidly, as if a prearranged comedy was being carried out. However, I
was not to be outdone in amiability, and so I heartily shook Mandara’s
great paw, and drank sour tembo (which I detested) with an affected
enjoyment quite touching in its hypocrisy. Then a bright idea crossed my
mind and I said—seeing that Mandara expected a reply to his
oration—“Mandara, I have got a little tale (hadithi) to tell you.” “I am
listening,” answered the chief. “Once, do you know, in Ulaya, there was
a man who had a hen (none of the Wa-čaga have heard of geese) which laid
him every morning a golden egg. And the man was very pleased at first,
but after awhile he got impatient, and he said, ‘Instead of waiting for
many days till I get a good sum from this hen’s eggs, let me cut her
open now, and get out all the gold at once.’ And he did so, and found
nothing inside. Now, wasn’t that a foolish man, Mandara?” “Ye-es,”
replied the chief thoughtfully, “perhaps he was.” Then he sipped more
tembo, and reflected. After a pause he turned to me and continued, “And
now _I_ will tell _you_ a tale. When I plant a seed or a sapling here in
my plantation, I let it grow quietly at first—I do not pull it up to
look at its roots, and I do not pluck its early blossoms or its tender
leaves. I wait until it is mature, and then,” he added thoughtfully,
looking straight before him, “if it fails to bear abundant fruit, I cut
it down.”
Then our conversation ranged over the most varied subjects—European
life, a description from me of an ironclad—_manowari_ (man-of-war) as
Mandara called it—the history and configuration of Čaga from Mandara,
whose notion of local geography was singularly correct—the Čaga
language, the English tongue, and so on.
The interview ended in rapturous friendship. Mandara declared himself my
father, claimed me as a son, and announced, almost hysterically, a
complete community of goods (a statement to which I inwardly demurred).
“Whenever the white man wanted a cow or a goat, he would just take them
from the herds of his father Mandara, and whenever Mandara desired a
handsome gun or a European bed, he would use those that belonged to his
white child.”
As an earnest of this happy arrangement he sent for a splendid ram, with
an immensely fat tail, a ewe, and a lamb, and handed them over to me as
a little “kitowéo” (relish), to take back to my camp. I then shook his
great hand enthusiastically, and with many a parting shout of “Kwa-heri
(good-bye), Mandara,” “Kwa-heri, mtoto wangu!” (good-bye, my child), I
turned my steps back to Kitimbiriu, my men enthusiastic over the “manéno
mazuri” (fine words) which had passed between their master and the chief
of Moši. Of course on my return I made up a quantity of the things he
most coveted, especially a number of packets of European seeds, and sent
them to him as an equivalent for the sheep. After this interview the
relations between Mandara and myself assumed such a friendly character,
that I felt myself able to rely entirely on his goodwill as a protection
against the rapacity of his followers. Consequently, the very next day I
despatched twenty men to Taita for the purpose, already mentioned, of
bringing the last instalment of goods left behind.
[Illustration:
KIBÔ IN THE EARLY MORNING.
To face page 136.
]
When these had departed, I was now at liberty to turn my attention to
more congenial studies. I installed my two collectors in a quickly
constructed hut, unpacked the bales of botanical paper, the cases of
taxidermist paraphernalia, and other necessaries in natural history
collecting, and set to work to amass and preserve as many specimens of
the fauna and flora around me as I could obtain. Having given every man
his allotted task, and being able to trust the general supervision of
the settlement to my Indian servant, I was freer in my movements than I
had been for a long time, and could ramble about alone all day with the
certainty of finding everything going on well when I returned. With a
light heart I was able to explore the beauties of my African
Switzerland. First of all, I desired to obtain a sketch of the snowy
dome of Kibô. This, the highest summit of Kilima-njaro, was not always
on view. For weeks together he would be swathed in clouds. But should
you be an early riser, you would hardly fail to catch a glimpse of him
just at sunrise, when before the cold breath of morning the unfolding
clouds part and scatter, and disclose his splendid crown of virgin snow,
irradiated with the pale pink sunshine. Thus it was that within a few
days of my arrival I had my first good stare at, and began my first
detailed sketch of Kilima-njaro’s highest peak, which the coast people
call “the mountain of the Snow Fiend,” and the Masai more reverently
term “the Home of God.” I hurried a short distance from my camp to the
edge of the ravine, whence there was little to obstruct the view, and
there, squatted amid the crushed bracken fronds at the commencement of
the precipitous descent, I looked across first to the opposite hill,
crested with feathery trees, acacias, sycamores, and palms, and then to
the swelling forest-clad heights beyond, gloomy and sombre in the shade,
as yet untouched by the sloping sunshine. Above these a vast white sheet
of fleecy cloud, uniform and flat, and crowning all, as if cut off from
the lower earth, and floating majestically in the pale blue heaven, the
snow-covered dome, with its blemishes of shadow and blaze of
preponderating light like that of the disc of the moon.
[Illustration:
Fig. 34.—A Native Dam.
]
The jealous clouds, however, granted me but a poor half-hour in which to
sketch the features of their monarch, and I was compelled to defer the
completion of my work to other opportunities. Meanwhile, I extended my
walks, gun in hand, and a collecting portfolio on my back, in all
directions, but my first favourite stroll was up the valley of our
little stream. Following the tiny path which ran parallel with our
irrigating channel, I came to the place where the latter branched off
from the parent stream. Here, at will, a passing native could cut off
our water-supply by laying a packet of grass and mud athwart the little
channel, and, therefore, bearing this in mind, and regarding also the
fertility and beauty of the rich valley (full of the alluvial soil
washed down from the hill-sides by the rain), I resolved that hereabouts
my principal plantations should be made. I obtained Mandara’s consent to
the plan, and accordingly set my man, Kadu Stanley, to work at once,
directing him to clear away the brushwood, burn it, mix the ashes with
the soil, and then plough the whole field up and break the clods of
earth. Soon many a rich bed of dark red earth was sown with seed, and
separated from its fellows by little runnels, along which, once a day or
oftener, water, diverted from the nearest waterfall, was turned. Indeed,
perpetual irrigation was here much simplified. The plenteous stream went
bounding through the valley, with a cascade every hundred yards or so.
From the head of these waterfalls nothing was easier than to divert a
stream on either side, carry it along a banked-up channel above your
plantations, and turn the water wherever you willed into the network of
tiny trenches which intersected the plots of ground.
[Illustration:
Fig. 35.—“Kitimbiriu” (our First Settlement on Kilima-njaro).
]
However, artificial irrigation seemed almost a superfluity in Čaga,
where never a month passed without rain, and where the climate was as
moist as that of Devonshire. I soon began to find that my first care
must be to get a rain-proof roof to sleep under. Our primal houses were
roughly made in a very few days. The men proceeded to the forest, cut a
certain number of poles, used those that were forked at one extremity as
“uprights,” and laid the horizontal rods across them, tying everything
securely with long lithe strips of wetted banana fibre. Then to this
rough framework they affixed a number of smaller sticks, until a rough
lattice-work was formed, and finally, the whole, roof and all, would be
neatly thatched with the old fronds of the banana-tree, resembling brown
paper in look and texture. (By-the-bye, when civilization extends to
Africa and people have got beyond the stage when they only seek for gold
or diamonds, it strikes me that sun-dried banana leaves would form an
admirable material for paper-making, superior to esparto grass.)
Provided the roof was done with care, it ought to be completely
rain-tight. As it was, a little patching generally had to take place
after the first shower. No windows, of course, were made. Light was
obtained from the open doorway, which was closed at night by a
mackintosh curtain and a door of wooden framework. Inside, the earthen
floor was stamped hard by men’s feet, and before inhabiting the house
numerous fires were burnt on the ground and their ashes pounded into the
beaten earth. Of course a trench or moat, to carry off the heavy rain,
was dug all round the house, so that it generally happened that these
hastily-constructed abodes were wonderfully dry and snug. When the house
was built for my own occupation I had a large mat made from plaited
strips of the useful “migomba” (dried banana leaves), and thrown down on
the bare floor of beaten earth. Then, on this, one or two wild beasts’
skins or a bright-coloured Zanzibar “mkeka” (dyed grass mat), added
quite a comfortable look to the interior. My bed was mounted in one
corner, my portable table stood in the centre of the dwelling, boxes of
necessaries were arranged along the walls, my washing-basin was poised
on a roughly-made tripod, shelves were hastily rigged up to support the
lighter articles of my equipment, and lastly, nails and hooks were
knocked into the accommodating rafters, and from these depended all the
heterogeneous articles that would let themselves be hung up.
Similar habitations were constructed for my men, paths were cleared and
open spaces mowed, and soon, where before had been little but the
pristine wilderness, rose the first decided outlines of my little
colony.