Transcriber’s Notes
Text printed in italics has been transcribed _between underscores_,
bold face text =between equal signs=. Small capitals have been changed
to ALL CAPITALS. Superscript text is represented by ^{text}.
More Transcriber’s Notes may be found at the end of this text.
THE
LAKE REGIONS OF CENTRAL AFRICA
VOL II.
LONDON
PRINTED BY SPOTTISWOODE AND CO.
NEW-STREET SQUARE
[Illustration: NAVIGATION OF THE TANGANYIKA LAKE.]
THE
LAKE REGIONS OF CENTRAL AFRICA
A PICTURE OF EXPLORATION
BY
RICHARD F. BURTON
Capt. H. M. I. Army: Fellow and Gold Medallist of the Royal
Geographical Society
“_Some to discover islands far away_”--_Shakspere_
IN TWO VOLUMES
VOL. II.
LONDON LONGMAN, GREEN, LONGMAN, AND ROBERTS 1860
_The right of translation is reserved_
CONTENTS
OF
THE SECOND VOLUME.
Page
CHAPTER XII.
The Geography and Ethnology of Unyamwezi.--The Fourth Region 1
CHAP. XIII.
At length we sight the Lake Tanganyika, the “Sea of Ujiji.” 34
CHAP. XIV.
We explore the Tanganyika Lake 80
CHAP. XV.
The Tanganyika Lake and its Periplus 134
CHAP. XVI.
We return to Unyanyembe 155
CHAP. XVII.
The Down-march to the Coast 223
CHAP. XVIII.
Village Life in East Africa 278
CHAP. XIX.
The Character and Religion of the East Africans; their Government,
and Slavery 324
Conclusion 379
APPENDICES.
APPENDIX I.: Commerce, Imports, and Exports 387
APPENDIX II.: Official Correspondence 420
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
IN
THE SECOND VOLUME.
CHROMOXYLOGRAPHS.
Navigation of the Tanganyika Lake _Frontispiece._
View in Usagara _to face page_ 1
Snay bin Amir’s House „ 155
Saydumi, a native of Uganda „ 223
The Basin of Maroro „ 255
The Basin of Kisanga „ 278
Map of the Routes between Zanzibar and the Great Lakes in Eastern
Africa in 1857, 1858 & 1859, by R. F. Burton
WOODCUTS.
Iwanza, or public-houses; with Looms to the left 1
My Tembe near the Tangangika 34
Head Dresses of Wanyamwezi 80
African heads, and Ferry-boat 134
Portraits of Muinyi Kidogo, the Kirangozi, the Mganga, &c. 155
Mgongo Thembo, or the Elephant’s Back 223
Jiwe la Mkoa, the Round Rock 242
Rufita Pass in Usagara 259
The Ivory Porter, the Cloth Porter, and Woman in Usagara 278
Gourd, Stool, Bellows, Guitar, and Drum 292
Gourds 313
A Mnyamwezi and a Mheha 324
The Bull-headed Mabruki, and the African standing position 378
The Elephant Rock 384
[Illustration: VIEW IN USAGARA.]
THE
LAKE REGIONS OF CENTRAL AFRICA.
[Illustration: A village interior in the Land of the Moon.
Utanta or loom.
Iwanza, or public houses.]
CHAPTER XII.
THE GEOGRAPHY AND ETHNOLOGY OF UNYAMWEZI.--THE FOURTH REGION.
The fourth division is a hilly table-land, extending from the western
skirts of the desert Mgunda Mk’hali, in E. long. 33° 57′, to the eastern
banks of the Malagarazi River, in E. long. 31° 10′: it thus stretches
diagonally over 155 rectilinear geographical miles. Bounded on the north
by Usui and the Nyanza Lake, to the south-eastwards by Ugala, southwards
by Ukimbu, and south-westwards by Uwende, it has a depth of from
twenty-five to thirty marches. Native caravans, if lightly laden, can
accomplish it in twenty-five days, including four halts. The maximum
altitude observed by B. P. therm. was 4050 feet, the minimum 2850. This
region contains the two great divisions of Unyamwezi and Uvinza.
The name of Unyamwezi was first heard by the Portuguese, according to
Giovanni Botero, towards the end of the sixteenth century, or about
1589. Pigafetta, who, in 1591, systematised the discoveries of the
earlier Portuguese, placed the empire of “Monemugi” or Munimigi in a
vast triangular area, whose limits were Monomotapa, Congo, and
Abyssinia: from his pages it appears that the people of this central
kingdom were closely connected by commerce with the towns on the eastern
coast of Africa. According to Dapper, the Dutch historian, (1671,) whose
work has been the great mine of information to subsequent writers upon
Africa south of the equator, about sixty days’ journey from the Atlantic
is the kingdom of Monemugi, which others call “Nimeamaye,” a name still
retained under the corrupted form “Nimeaye” in our atlases. M.
Malte-Brun, senior, mentioning Mounemugi, adds, “ou, selon une
autographe plus authentique, _Mou-nimougi_.” All the Portuguese authors
call the people Monemugi or Mono-emugi; Mr. Cooley prefers Monomoezi,
which he derives from “Munha Munge,” or “lord of the world,” the title
of a great African king in the interior, commemorated by the historian
De Barros. Mr. Macqueen (‘Geography of Central Africa’), who also gives
Manmoise, declares that “Mueno-muge, Mueno-muize, Monomoise, and
Uniamese,” relate to the same place and people, comprehending a large
extent of country in the interior of Africa: he explains the word
erroneously to mean the “great Moises or Movisas.” The Rev. Mr. Erhardt
asserts that for facility of pronunciation the coast merchants have
turned the name “Wanamesi” into “Waniamesi,” which also leads his
readers into error. The Rev. Mr. Livingstone thus endorses the mistake
of Messrs. Macqueen and Erhardt: “The names Monomoizes, spelt also
Monemuigis and Monomuizes, and Monomotapistas, when applied to the
tribes, are exactly the same as if we should call the Scotch the Lord
Douglases.... Monomoizes was formed from Moiza or Muiza, the singular of
the word Babisa or Aiza, the proper name of a large tribe to the north.”
In these sentences there is a confusion between the lands of the
Wanyamwezi, lying under the parallel of the Tanganyika Lake, and the
Wabisa (in the singular Mbísá, the Wavisa of the Rev. Mr. Rebmann), a
well-known commercial tribe dwelling about the Maravi or Nyassa Lake,
S.W. of Kilwa, whose name in times of old was corrupted by the
Portuguese to Movizas or Movisas. Finally M. Guillain, in a work already
alluded to, states correctly the name of the people to be Oua-nyamouczi,
but in designating the country “pays de Nyamouezi,” he shows little
knowledge of the Zangian dialects. M. V. A. Malte-Brun, junior
(‘Bulletin de Géographie,’ Paris, 1856, Part II. p. 295) correctly
writes Wanyamwezi.
A name so discrepantly corrupted deserves some notice. Unyamwezi is
translated by Dr. Krapf and the Rev. Mr. Rebmann, “Possessions of the
Moon.” The initial U, the causal and locative prefix, denotes the land,
nya, of, and mwezi, articulated m’ezí with semi-elision of the w, means
the moon. The people sometimes pronounce their country name Unyamiezi,
which would be a plural form, miezi signifying moons or months. The
Arabs and the people of Zanzibar, for facility and rapidity of
pronunciation, dispense with the initial dissyllable, and call the
country and its race Mwezi. The correct designation of the inhabitants
of Unyamwezi is, therefore, Mnyamwezi in the singular, and Wanyamwezi in
the plural: Kinyamwezi is the adjectival form. It is not a little
curious that the Greeks should have placed their της σεληνης ορος--the
mountain of the moon--and the Hindus their Soma Giri (an expression
probably translated from the former), in the vicinity of the African
“Land of the Moon.” It is impossible to investigate the antiquity of the
vernacular term; all that can be discovered is, that nearly 350 years
ago the Portuguese explorers of Western Africa heard the country
designated by its present name.
There is the evidence of barbarous tradition for a belief in the
existence of Unyamwezi as a great empire, united under a single despot.
The elders declare that their patriarchal ancestor became after death
the first tree, and afforded shade to his children and descendants.
According to the Arabs the people still perform pilgrimage to a holy
tree, and believe that the penalty of sacrilege in cutting off a twig
would be visited by sudden and mysterious death. All agree in relating
that during the olden time Unyamwezi was united under a single
sovereign, whose tribe was the Wakalaganza, still inhabiting the western
district, Usagozi. According to the people, whose greatest chronical
measure is a Masika, or rainy season, in the days of the grandfathers of
their grandfathers the last of the Wanyamwezi emperors died. His
children and nobles divided and dismembered his dominions, further
partitions ensued, and finally the old empire fell into the hands of a
rabble of petty chiefs. Their wild computation would point to an epoch
of 150 years ago--a date by no means improbable.
These glimmerings of light thrown by African tradition illustrate the
accounts given by the early Portuguese concerning the extent and the
civilisation of the Unyamwezi empire. Moreover, African travellers in
the seventeenth century concur in asserting that, between 250 and 300
years ago, there was an outpouring of the barbarians from the heart of
Æthiopia and from the shores of the Central Lake towards the eastern and
southern coasts of the peninsula, a general waving and wandering of
tribes which caused great ethnological and geographical confusion,
public demoralisation, dismemberment of races, and change, confusion,
and corruption of tongues. About this period it is supposed the kingdom
of Mtándá, the first Kazembe, was established. The Kafirs of the Cape
also date their migration from the northern regions to the banks of the
Kei about a century and a half ago.
In these days Unyamwezi has returned to the political status of Eastern
Africa in the time of the Periplus. It is broken up into petty
divisions, each ruled by its own tyrant; his authority never extends
beyond five marches; moreover, the minor chiefs of the different
districts are virtually independent of their suzerains. One language is
spoken throughout the land of the Moon, but the dialectic differences
are such that the tribes in the east with difficulty understand their
brethren in the west. The principal provinces are--Utakama to the
extreme north, Usukuma on the south,--in Kinyamwezi sukuma means the
north, takama the south, kiya the east, and mwere the west,--Unyanyembe
in the centre, Ufyoma and Utumbara in the north-west, Unyangwira in the
south-east, Usagozi and Usumbwá to the westward. The three normal
divisions of the people are into Wanyamwezi, Wasukuma or northern, and
Watakama or southern.
The general character of Unyamwezi is rolling ground, intersected with
low conical and tabular hills, whose lines ramify in all directions. No
mountain is found in the country. The superjacent stratum is clay,
overlying the sandstone based upon various granites, which in some
places crop out, picturesquely disposed in blocks and boulders and huge
domes and lumpy masses; ironstone is met with at a depth varying from
five to twelve feet, and at Kazeh, the Arab settlement in Unyanyembe,
bits of coarse ore were found by digging not more than four feet in a
chance spot. During the rains a coat of many-tinted greens conceals the
soil; in the dry season the land is grey, lighted up by golden stubbles
and dotted with wind-distorted trees, shallow swamps of emerald grass,
and wide sheets of dark mud. Dwarfed stumps and charred “black-jacks”
deform the fields, which are sometimes ditched or hedged in, whilst a
thin forest of parachute-shaped thorns diversifies the waves of rolling
land and earth-hills spotted with sun-burnt stone. The reclaimed tracts
and clearings are divided from one another by strips of primæval jungle,
varying from two to twelve miles in length. As in most parts of Eastern
Africa, the country is dotted with “fairy mounts”--dwarf mounds, the
ancient sites of trees now crumbled to dust, and the débris of insect
architecture; they appear to be rich ground, as they are always
diligently cultivated. The yield of the soil, according to the Arabs,
averages sixty-fold, even in unfavourable seasons.
The Land of the Moon, which is the garden of Central Intertropical
Africa, presents an aspect of peaceful rural beauty which soothes the
eye like a medicine after the red glare of barren Ugogo, and the dark
monotonous verdure of the western provinces. The inhabitants are
comparatively numerous in the villages, which rise at short intervals
above their impervious walls of the lustrous green milk-bush, with its
coral-shaped arms, variegating the well-hoed plains; whilst in the
pasture-lands frequent herds of many-coloured cattle, plump,
round-barrelled, and high-humped, like the Indian breeds, and mingled
flocks of goats and sheep dispersed over the landscape, suggest ideas of
barbarous comfort and plenty. There are few scenes more soft and
soothing than a view of Unyamwezi in the balmy evenings of spring. As
the large yellow sun nears the horizon, a deep stillness falls upon
earth: even the zephyr seems to lose the power of rustling the lightest
leaf. The milky haze of midday disappears from the firmament, the flush
of departing day mantles the distant features of scenery with a lovely
rose-tint, and the twilight is an orange glow that burns like distant
horizontal fires, passing upwards through an imperceptibly graduated
scale of colours--saffron, yellow, tender green, and the lightest
azure--into the dark blue of the infinite space above. The charm of the
hour seems to affect even the unimaginative Africans, as they sit in the
central spaces of their villages, or, stretched under the forest-trees,
gaze upon the glories around.
In Unyamwezi water generally lies upon the surface, during the rains, in
broad shallow pools, which become favourite sites for rice-fields. These
little ziwa and mbuga--ponds and marshes--vary from two to five feet
below the level of the land; in the dry season they are betrayed from
afar by a green line of livelier vegetation streaking the dead tawny
plain. The Arabs seldom dig their wells deeper than six feet, and they
complain of the want of “live-water” gushing from the rocky ground, as
in their native Oman. The country contains few springs, and the surface
of retentive clay prevents the moisture penetrating to the subsoil. The
peculiarity of the produce is its decided chalybeate flavour. The
versant of the country varies. The eastern third, falling to the
south-east, discharges its surplus supplies through the Rwaha river into
the Indian Ocean; in the centre, water seems to stagnate; and in the
western third, the flow, turning to the north and north-west, is carried
by the Gombe nullah--a string of pools during the dry season, and a
rapid unfordable stream during the rains--into the great Malagarazi
river, the principal eastern influent of the Tanganyika Lake. The levels
of the country and the direction of the waters combine to prove that the
great depression of Central Africa, alluded to in the preceding chapter,
commences in the district of Kigwa in Unyamwezi.
The climate of the island and coast of Zanzibar has, it must be
remembered, double seasons, which are exceedingly confused and
irregular. The lands of Unyamwezi and Uvinza, on the other hand, are as
remarkable for simplicity of division. There eight seasons disturb the
idea of year; here but two--a summer and a winter. Central Africa has,
as the Spaniards say of the Philippine Isles,
“Seis mezes de polvo,
Seis mezes de lodo.”
In 1857 the Masika, or rains, commenced throughout Eastern Unyamwezi on
the 14th of November. In the northern and western provinces the wet
monsoon begins earlier and lasts longer. At Msene it precedes Unyanyembe
about a month; in Ujiji, Karagwah, and Uganda, nearly two months. Thus
the latter countries have a rainy season which lasts from the middle of
September till the middle of May.
The moisture-bearing wind in this part of Africa is the fixed south-east
trade, deflected, as in the great valley of the Mississippi and in the
island of Ceylon, into a periodical south-west monsoon. As will appear
in these pages, the downfalls begin earlier in Central Africa than upon
the eastern coast, and from the latter point they travel by slow
degrees, with the northing sun, to the north-east, till they find a
grave upon the rocky slopes of the Himalayas.
The rainy monsoon is here ushered in, accompanied, and terminated by
storms of thunder and lightning, and occasional hail-falls. The blinding
flashes of white, yellow, or rose colour play over the firmament
uninterruptedly for hours, during which no darkness is visible. In the
lighter storms thirty and thirty-five flashes may be counted in a
minute: so vivid is the glare that it discloses the finest shades of
colour, and appears followed by a thick and palpable gloom, such as
would hang before a blind man’s eyes, whilst a deafening roar
simultaneously following the flash, seems to travel, as it were, to and
fro overhead. Several claps sometimes sound almost at the same moment,
and as if coming from different directions. The same storm will, after
the most violent of its discharges, pass over, and be immediately
followed by a second, showing the superabundance of electricity in the
atmosphere. When hail is about to fall, a rushing noise is heard in the
air, with sudden coolness and a strange darkness from the canopy of
brownish purple clouds. The winds are exceedingly variable: perhaps they
are most often from the east and north-east during summer, from the
north-west and south-west in the rains; but they are answered from all
quarters of the heavens, and the most violent storms sail up against the
lower atmospheric currents. The Portuguese of the Mozambique attribute
these terrible discharges of electricity to the quantity of mineral
substances scattered about the country; but a steaming land like Eastern
Africa wants, during the rains, no stronger battery. In the rainy season
the sensation is that experienced during the equinoctial gales in the
Mediterranean, where the scirocco diffuses everywhere discomfort and
disease. The fall is not, as in Western India, a steady downpour,
lasting sometimes two or three days without a break. In Central Africa,
rain seldom endures beyond twelve hours, and it often assumes for weeks
an appearance of regularity, re-occurring at a certain time. Night is
its normal season; the mornings are often wet, and the torrid midday is
generally dry. As in Southern Africa, a considerable decrease of
temperature is the consequence of long-continued rain. Westward of
Unyanyembe, hail-storms, during the rainy monsoon, are frequent and
violent; according to the Arabs, the stones sometimes rival pigeons’
eggs in size. Throughout this monsoon the sun burns with sickly
depressing rays, which make earth reek like a garment hung out to dry.
Yet this is not considered the unhealthy period: the inundation is too
deep, and evaporation is yet unable to extract sufficient poison from
decay.
As in India and the southern regions of Africa, the deadly season
follows the wet monsoon from the middle of May to the end of June. The
kosi or south-west wind gives place to the kaskazi, or north-east,
about April, a little later than at Zanzibar. The cold gales and the
fervid suns then affect the outspread waters; the rivers, having swollen
during the weeks of violent downfall that usher in the end of the rains,
begin to shrink, and miry morasses and swamps of black vegetable mud
line the low-lands whose central depths are still under water. The
winds, cooled by excessive evaporation and set in motion by the heat,
howl over the country by night and day, dispersing through the
population colds and catarrhs, agues and rheumatisms, dysenteries and
deadly fevers. It must, however, be remarked that many cases which in
India and Sindh would be despaired of, survived in Eastern Africa.
The hot season, or summer, lasting from the end of June till nearly the
middle of November, forms the complement of the year. The air now
becomes healthy and temperate; the cold, raw winds rarely blow, and the
people recover from their transition diseases. At long intervals, during
these months, but a few grateful and refreshing showers, accompanied by
low thunderings, cool the air and give life to the earth. These
phenomena are expected after the change of the moon, and not, as in
Zanzibar, during her last quarter. The Arabs declare that here, as in
the island, rain sometimes falls from a clear sky--a phenomenon not
unknown to African travellers. The drought affects the country severely,
a curious exception to the rule in the zone of perpetual rain; and after
August whirlwinds of dust become frequent. At this time the climate is
most agreeable to the senses; even in the hottest nights a blanket is
welcome, especially about dawn, and it is possible to dine at 3 or 4
P.M., when in India the exertion would be impracticable. During the day
a ring-cloud, or a screen of vapour, almost invariably tempers the
solar rays; at night a halo, or a corona, generally encircles the moon.
The clouds are chiefly cumulus, cumulo-stratus, and nimbus; the sky is
often overcast with large white masses floating, apparently without
motion, upon the milky haze, and in the serenest weather a few threads
are seen pencilled upon the expanse above. Sunrise is seldom thoroughly
clear, and, when so, the clouds, sublimed in other regions and brought
up by the rising winds, begin to gather in the forenoon. They are
melted, as it were, by the fervent heat of the sun between noon and 3
P.M., at which time also the breezes fall light. Thick mists collect
about sunset, and by night the skies are seldom free from clouds. The
want of heat to dilate the atmosphere at this season, and the
light-absorbing vegetation which clothes the land, causes a peculiar
dimness in the Galaxy and “Magellan’s Clouds.” The twilight also is
short, and the zodiacal light is not observed. The suffocating sensation
of the tropics is unknown, and at noon in the month of September--the
midsummer of this region--the thermometer, defended from the wind, in a
single-fold Arab tent, never exceeded 113° Fahr. Except during the
rains, the dews are not heavy, as in Zanzibar, in the alluvial valleys,
and in Usagara and Ujiji: the people do not fear exposure to them,
though, as in parts of France, they consider dew-wetted grass
unwholesome for cattle. The Arabs stand bathing in the occasional
torrents of rain without the least apprehension. The temperature varies
too little for the European constitution, which requires a winter. The
people, however, scarcely care to clothe themselves. The flies and
mosquitoes--those pests of most African countries--are here a minor
annoyance.
The principal cause of disease during the summer of Unyamwezi is the
east wind, which, refrigerated by the damp alluvial valleys of the first
region and the tree-clad peaks and swampy plains of Usagara, sweeps the
country, like the tramontanas of Italy, with a freezing cold in the
midst of an atmosphere properly tepid. These unnatural combinations of
extremes, causing sudden chills when the skin perspires, bring on
inevitable disease; strangers often suffer severely, and the influenza
is as much feared in Unyamwezi as in England. The east wind is even more
dangerous in the hut than in the field: draughts from the four quarters
play upon the patient, making one side of the body tremble with cold,
whilst the other, defended by the wall or heated by the fire, burns with
fever-glow. The gales are most violent immediately after the cessation
of the rains; about the beginning of August they become warmer and fall
light. At this time frequent whirlwinds sweep from the sun-parched land
clouds of a fine and penetrating clay-dust; and slight shocks of
earthquakes are by no means uncommon. Three were observed by the
Expedition--at noon on the 14th of June, 1858; on the morning of the
13th of June; and at 5 P.M. on the 22nd of November, 1858. The motion,
though mild, was distinctly perceptible; unfortunately, means of
ascertaining the direction were wanted. The people of the country call
this phenomenon “Tetemeka,” or the trembling; and the Arabs remember a
shock of a serious nature which took place at Unyanyembe in the hot
season of 1852. After September, though the land is parched with
drought, the trees begin to put forth their leaves; it is the coupling
season of beasts, and the period of nidification and incubation for
birds. The gradual lowering of the temperature, caused by the southern
declination of the sun, acts like the genial warmth of an English
spring. As all sudden changes from siccity to humidity are prejudicial
to man, there is invariably severe disease at the end of the summer,
when the rains set in.
Travellers from Unyamwezi homeward returned often represent that country
to be the healthiest in Eastern and Central Africa: they quote, as a
proof, the keenness of their appetites and the quantity of food which
they consume. The older residents, however, modify their opinions: they
declare that digestion does not wait upon appetite; and that, as in
Egypt, Mazanderan, Malabar, and other hot-damp countries, no man long
retains rude health. The sequelæ of their maladies are always severe;
few care to use remedies, deeming them inefficacious against morbific
influences to them unknown; convalescence is protracted, painful, and
uncertain, and at length they are compelled to lead the lives of
confirmed invalids. The gifts of the climate, lassitude and indolence,
according to them, predispose to corpulence; and the regular warmth
induces baldness, and thins the beard, thus assimilating strangers in
body as in mind to the aborigines. They are unanimous in quoting a
curious effect of climate, which they attribute to a corruption of the
“humours and juices of the body.” Men who, after a lengthened sojourn in
these regions return to Oman, throw away the surplus provisions brought
from the African coast, burn their clothes and bedding, and for the
first two or three months eschew society; a peculiar effluvium rendering
them, it is said, offensive to the finer olfactories of their
compatriots.
The Mukunguru of Unyamwezi is perhaps the severest seasoning fever in
this part of Africa. It is a bilious remittent, which normally lasts
three days; it wonderfully reduces the patient in that short period, and
in severe cases the quotidian is followed by a long attack of a tertian
type. The consequences are severe and lasting even in men of the
strongest nervous diathesis; burning and painful eyes, hot palms and
soles, a recurrence of shivering and flushing fits, with the extremities
now icy cold, then painfully hot and swollen, indigestion, insomnolency,
cutaneous eruptions and fever sores, languor, dejection, and all the
inconveniences resulting from torpidity of liver, or from an inordinate
secretion of bile, betray the poison deep-lurking in the system. In some
cases this fever works speedily; some even, becoming at once delirious,
die on the first or the second day, and there is invariably an
exacerbation of symptoms before the bilious remittent passes away.
The fauna of Unyamwezi are similar to those described in Usagara and
Ugogo. In the jungles quadrumana are numerous; lions and leopards,
cynhyænas and wild cats haunt the forests; the elephant and the
rhinoceros, the giraffe and the Cape buffalo, the zebra, the quagga (?),
and the koodoo wander over the plains; and the hippopotamus and
crocodile are found in every large pool. The nyanyi or cynocephalus in
the jungles of Usukuma attains the size of a greyhound; according to the
people, there are three varieties of colour--red, black, and yellow.
They are the terror of the neighbouring districts: women never dare to
approach their haunts; they set the leopard at defiance, and, when in a
large body, they do not, it is said, fear the lion. The Colobus guereza,
or tippet monkey, the “polume” of Dr. Livingstone (ch. xvi.), here
called mbega, is admired on account of its polished black skin and
snowy-white mane. It is a cleanly animal, ever occupied in polishing
its beautiful garb, which, according to the Arabs, it tears to pieces
when wounded, lest the hunter should profit by it. The mbega lives in
trees, seldom descending, and feeds upon the fruit and the young leaves.
The Arabs speak of wild dogs in the vicinity of Unyanyembe, describing
them as being about eighteen inches in height, with rufous-black and
shaggy coats, and long thick tails; they are gregarious, running in
packs of from 20 to 200; they attack indiscriminately man and the
largest animals, and their only cry is a howl. About the time of our
autumn the pools are visited by various kinds of aquatic birds, widgeon,
plump little teal, fine snipe, curlew, and crane; the ardea, or white
“paddy-bird” of India, and the “lily-trotter” (Parra Africana), are
scattered over the country; and sometimes, though rarely, the chenalopex
or common Egyptian-goose and the gorgeous-crowned crane (Balearica
pavonina), the latter a favourite dish with the Arabs, appear. In
several parts of Unyamwezi, especially in the north, there is a large
and well-flavoured species of black-backed goose (Sakidornis melanota):
the common wild duck of England was not seen. Several specimens of the
Buceros, the secretary-bird (Serpentarius reptilivorus), and large
vultures, probably the condor of the Cape, were observed in Unyamwezi;
the people do not molest them, holding the flesh to be carrion. The
Cuculus indicator, called in Kisawahili “tongoe,” is common; but, its
honey being mostly hived, it does not attract attention. Grillivori, and
a species of thrush, about the size of common larks, with sulphur-yellow
patches under the eyes, and two naked black striæ beneath the throat,
are here migratory birds; they do good service to the agriculturist
against the locust. A variety of the Loxia or grossbill constructs
nests sometimes in bunches hanging from the lower branches of the trees.
The mtiko, a kind of water-wagtail (Motacilla), ventures into the huts
with the audacity of a London sparrow, and the Africans have a prejudice
against killing it. Swallows and martins of various kinds, some
peculiarly graceful and slender, may be seen migrating at the approach
of winter in regular travelling order: of these, one variety resembles
the English bird. The Africans declare that a single species of hirundo,
probably the sand-martin, builds in the precipitous earth-banks of the
nullahs: their nests were not seen, however, as in Southern Africa,
under the eaves of houses. There are a few ostriches, hawks, ravens,
plovers, nightjars (Caprimulgidæ), red and blue jays of brilliant plume,
muscicapæ, blackcaps or mock nightingales (Motacilla atrocapilla?),
passerines of various kinds, hoopoes, bulbuls, wrens, larks, and
bats. We saw but few poisonous animals. Besides the dendrophis, the
only ophidia killed in the country were snakes, with slate-coloured
backs, and silver bellies, resembling the harmless “mas” or
“hanash” of Somaliland, the Psammophis sibilaris (L.); C. moniliger
Lacépède,--according to Mr. Blyth (“Journal of the As. Soc. of Bengal,”
vol. xxiv., p. 306), who declares it to be not venomous--they abound in
the houses and destroy the rats. The people speak of a yellow and
brown-coated snake, eight feet long by five or six inches in diameter;
it is probably a boa or rock-snake. Chúrá or frogs are numerous in the
swamps, where the frog-concerts resemble those of the New World; and in
the regions about the Tanganyika Lake a large variety makes night
hideous with its croakings. Of the ranæ there are many species. The
largest is probably the “matmalelo” of S. Africa; it is eaten by the
Wagogo and other tribes. A smaller kind is of dark colour, and with long
legs, which enable it to hop great distances. A third is of a dirty
yellow, with brownish speckles. There is also a little green tree-frog,
which adheres to the broad and almost perpendicular leaves of the
thicker grasses. The leech is found in the lakes and rivers of the
interior, as well as in Zanzibar and on both coasts of Africa; according
to the Arabs they are of two kinds, large and small. The people neither
take precautions against them when drinking at the streams, as the Somal
do, nor are they aware of any officinal use for the animals; moreover,
it is impossible to persuade a Msawahili to collect them: they are of
P’hepo or fiendish nature, and never fail to haunt and harm their
captor. Jongo, or huge millepedes, some attaining a length of half a
foot, with shiny black bodies and red feet, are found in the fields and
forests, especially during the rains: covered with epizoa, these animals
present a disgusting appearance, and they seem, to judge from their
spoils, to die off during the hot weather. At certain seasons there is a
great variety of the papilionaceous family in the vicinity of waters
where libellulæ or dragon-flies also abound. The country is visited at
irregular times by flights of locusts, here called nzige. In spring the
plants are covered in parts with the p’hánzí, a large pink and green
variety, and the destructive species depicted and described by Salt:
they rise from the earth like a glowing rose-coloured cloud, and die off
about the beginning of the rains. The black leather-like variety, called
by the Arabs “Satan’s ass,” is not uncommon: it is eaten by the
Africans, as are many other edibles upon which strangers look with
disgust. The Arabs describe a fly which infests the forest-patches of
Unyamwezi: it is about the size of a small wasp, and is so fatal that
cattle attacked by it are at once killed and eaten before they become
carrion from its venomous effects. In parts the country is dotted with
ant-hills, which, when old, become hard as sandstone: they are generally
built by the termite under some shady tree, which prevents too rapid
drying, and apparently the people have not learned, like their brethren
in South Africa, to use them as ovens.
From Tura westward to Unyanyembe, the central district of Unyamwezi,
caravans usually number seven marches, making a total of 60 rectilinear
geographical miles. As far as Kigwa there is but one line of route; from
that point travelling parties diverge far and wide, like ships making
their different courses.
The races requiring notice in this region are two, the Wakimbu and the
Wanyamwezi.
The Wakimbu, who are emigrants into Unyamwezi, claim a noble origin, and
derive themselves from the broad lands running south of Unyanyembe as
far westward as K’hokoro. About twenty masika, wet monsoons, or years
ago, according to themselves, in company with their neighbours, the
Wakonongo and the Wamia, they left Nguru, Usanga, and Usenga, in
consequence of the repeated attacks of the Warori, and migrated to
Kipiri, the district lying south of Tura; they have now extended into
Mgunda Mk’hali and Unyanyembe, where they hold the land by permission of
the Wanyamwezi. In these regions there are few obstacles to immigrants.
They visit the Sultan, make a small present, obtain permission to
settle, and name the village after their own chief; but the original
proprietors still maintain their rights to the soil. The Wakimbu build
firmly stockaded villages, tend cattle, and cultivate sorghum and
maize, millet and pulse, cucumbers, and water-melons. Apparently they
are poor, being generally clad in skins. They barter slaves and ivory in
small quantities to the merchants, and some travel to the coast. They
are considered treacherous by their neighbours, and Mapokera, the Sultan
of Tura, is, according to the Arabs, prone to commit “_avanies_.” They
are known by a number of small lines formed by raising the skin with a
needle, and opening it by points literally between the hair of the
temples and the eyebrows. In appearance they are dark and uncomely;
their arms are bows and arrows, spears and knives stuck in the leathern
waistbelt; some wear necklaces of curiously plaited straw, others a
strip of white cowskin bound around the brow--a truly savage and African
decoration. Their language differs from Kinyamwezi.
The Wanyamwezi tribe, the proprietors of the soil, is the typical race
in this portion of Central Africa: its comparative industry and
commercial activity have secured to it a superiority over the other
kindred races.
The aspect of the Wanyamwezi is alone sufficient to disprove the
existence of very elevated lands in this part of the African interior.
They are usually of a dark sepia-brown, rarely coloured like diluted
Indian ink, as are the Wahiao and slave races to the south, with negroid
features markedly less Semitic than the people of the eastern coast. The
effluvium from their skins, especially after exercise or excitement,
marks their connection with the negro. The hair curls crisply, but it
grows to the length of four or five inches before it splits; it is
usually twisted into many little ringlets or hanks; it hangs down like a
fringe to the neck, and is combed off the forehead after the manner of
the ancient Egyptians and the modern Hottentots. The beard is thin and
short, there are no whiskers, and the moustachio--when not plucked
out--is scant and straggling. Most of the men and almost all the women
remove the eyelashes, and pilar hair rarely appears to grow. The normal
figure of the race is tall and stout, and the women are remarkable for
the elongation of the mammary organs. Few have small waists, and the
only lean men in the land are the youths, the sick, and the famished.
This race is said to be long-lived, and it is not deficient in bodily
strength and savage courage. The clan-mark is a double line of little
cuts, like the marks of cupping, made by a friend with a knife or razor,
along the temporal fossæ from the external edges of the eyebrows to the
middle of the cheeks or to the lower jaws. Sometimes a third line, or a
band of three small lines, is drawn down the forehead to the bridge of
the nose. The men prefer a black, charcoal being the substance generally
used, the women a blue colour, and the latter sometimes ornament their
faces with little perpendicular scars below the eyes. They do not file
the teeth into a saw-shape as seen amongst the southern races, but they
generally form an inner triangular or wedge-shaped aperture by chipping
away the internal corners of the two front incisors like the Damaras,
and the women extract the lower central teeth. Both sexes enlarge the
lobes of the ears. In many parts of the country skins are more commonly
worn than cloth, except by the Sultans and the wealthier classes. The
women wear the long tobe of the coast, tightly wrapped round either
above or more commonly below the breast; the poorer classes veil the
bosom with a square or softened skin; the remainder of the dress is a
kilt or short petticoat of the same material extending from waist to
knee. Maidens never cover the breast, and children are rarely clothed;
the infant, as usual in East Africa, is carried in a skin fastened by
thongs behind the parent’s back. The favourite ornaments are beads, of
which the red coral, the pink, and the “pigeon-eggs” made at Nuremberg
are preferred. From the neck depend strings of beads with kiwangwa,
disks of shell brought from the coast, and crescents of hippopotamus
teeth country made, and when the beard is long it is strung with red and
particoloured beads. Brass and copper bangles or massive rings are worn
upon the wrists, the forearm bears the ponderous kitindi or coil
bracelet, and the arm above the elbow is sometimes decorated with
circlets of ivory or with a razor in an ivory étui; the middle is girt
with a coil of wire twisted round a rope of hair or fibre, and the
ankles are covered with small iron bells and the rings of thin brass,
copper, or iron wire, called sambo. When travelling, a goat’s horn, used
as a bugle, is secured over the right shoulder by a lanyard and allowed
to hang by the left side: in the house many wear a smaller article of
the same kind, hollowed inside and containing various articles intended
as charms, and consecrated by the Mganga or medicine-man. The arms are
slender assegais with the shoulders of the blade rounded off: they are
delivered, as by the Somal, with the thumb and forefinger after a
preliminary of vibratory motion, but the people want the force and the
dexterity of the Kafirs. Some have large spears for thrusting, and men
rarely leave the hut without their bows and arrows, the latter
unpoisoned, but curiously and cruelly barbed. They make also the long
double-edged knives called sime, and different complications of rungu or
knob-kerries, some of them armed with an iron lance-head upon the wooden
bulge. Dwarf battle-axes are also seen, but not so frequently as
amongst the western races on the Tanganyika Lake. The shield in
Unyamwezi resembles that of Usagara; it is however rarely used.
There are but few ceremonies amongst the Wanyamwezi. A woman about to
become a mother retires from the hut to the jungle, and after a few
hours returns with a child wrapped in goatskin upon her back, and
probably carrying a load of firewood on her head. The medical treatment
of the Arabs with salt and various astringents for forty days is here
unknown. Twins are not common as amongst the Kafir race, and one of the
two is invariably put to death; the universal custom amongst these
tribes is for the mother to wrap a gourd or calabash in skins, to place
it to sleep with, and to feed it like, the survivor. If the wife die
without issue, the widower claims from her parents the sum paid to them
upon marriage; if she leave a child, the property is preserved for it.
When the father can afford it, a birth is celebrated by copious
libations of pombe. Children are suckled till the end of the second
year. Their only education is in the use of the bow and arrow; after the
fourth summer the boy begins to learn archery with diminutive weapons,
which are gradually increased in strength. Names are given without
ceremony; and as in the countries to the eastward, many of the heathens
have been called after their Arab visitors. Circumcision is not
practised by this people. The children in Unyamwezi generally are the
property not of the uncle but of the father, who can sell or slay them
without blame; in Usukuma or the northern lands, however, succession and
inheritance are claimed by the nephews or sisters’ sons. The Wanyamwezi
have adopted the curious practice of leaving property to their
illegitimate children by slave girls or concubines, to the exclusion of
their issue by wives; they justify it by the fact of the former
requiring their assistance more than the latter, who have friends and
relatives to aid them. As soon as the boy can walk he tends the flocks;
after the age of ten he drives the cattle to pasture, and, considering
himself independent of his father, he plants a tobacco-plot and aspires
to build a hut for himself. There is not a boy “which cannot earn his
own meat.”
Another peculiarity of the Wanyamwezi is the position of the Wahárá or
unmarried girls. Until puberty they live in the father’s house; after
that period the spinsters of the village, who usually number from seven
to a dozen, assemble together and build for themselves at a distance
from their homes a hut where they can receive their friends without
parental interference. There is but one limit to community in single
life: if the Mhárá or “maiden” be likely to become a mother, her “young
man” must marry her under pain of mulct; and if she die in childbirth,
her father demands from her lover a large fine for having taken away his
daughter’s life. Marriage takes place when the youth can afford to pay
the price for a wife: it varies according to circumstances from one to
ten cows. The wife is so far the property of the husband that he can
claim damages from the adulterer; he may not, however, sell her, except
when in difficulties. The marriage is celebrated with the usual carouse,
and the bridegroom takes up his quarters in his wife’s home, not under
her father’s roof. Polygamy is the rule with the wealthy. There is
little community of interests and apparently a lack of family affection
in these tribes. The husband, when returning from the coast laden with
cloth, will refuse a single shukkah to his wife, and the wife
succeeding to an inheritance will abandon her husband to starvation. The
man takes charge of the cattle, goats, sheep, and poultry; the woman has
power over the grain and the vegetables; and each must grow tobacco,
having little hope of borrowing from the other. Widows left with houses,
cattle, and fields, usually spend their substance in supporting lovers,
who are expected occasionally to make presents in return. Hence no coast
slave in Wanyamwezi is ever known to keep a shukkah of cloth.
The usual way of disposing of a corpse in former times was, to carry it
out on the head and to throw it into some jungle strip where the fisi or
cynhyæna abounds,--a custom which accounts for the absence of
graveyards. The Wanyamwezi at first objected to the Arabs publicly
burying their dead in their fields, for fear of pollution; they would
assemble in crowds to close the way against a funeral party. The
merchants, however, persevered till they succeeded in establishing a
right. When a Mnyamwezi dies in a strange country, and his comrades take
the trouble to inter him, they turn the face of the corpse towards the
mother’s village, a proceeding which shows more sentiment than might be
expected from them. The body is buried standing, or tightly bound in a
heap, or placed in a sitting position with the arms clasping the knees:
if the deceased be a great man, a sheep and a bullock are slaughtered
for a funeral feast, the skin is placed over his face, and the hide is
bound to his back. When a sultan dies in a foreign land his body is
buried upon the spot, and his head, or what remains of it, is carried
back for sepulture to his own country. The chiefs of Unyamwezi generally
are interred by a large assemblage of their subjects with cruel rites.
A deep pit is sunk, with a kind of vault or recess projecting from it:
in this the corpse, clothed with skin and hide, and holding a bow in the
right hand, is placed sitting, with a pot of pombe, upon a dwarf stool,
whilst sometimes one, but more generally three female slaves, one on
each side and the third in front, are buried alive to preserve their
lord from the horrors of solitude. A copious libation of pombe upon the
heaped-up earth concludes the ceremony. According to the Arabs, the
Wasukuma inter all their sultans in a jungle north of Unyanyembe, and
the neighbouring peasants deposit before seed-time small offerings of
grain at the Mzimo or Fetiss-house which marks the spot.