marches along principally the northern bank of the Rwaha River, to the
meridian of Eastern Unyanyembe. They are a semi-pastoral tribe,
continually at war with their neighbours. They never sell their own
people, but attack the Wabena, the Wakimbu, the Wahehe, the Wakonongo,
and the races about Unyangwira, and drive their captives to the sea, or
dispose of them to the slavers in Usagara. The price is of course cheap;
a male adult is worth from two to six shukkah merkani. Some years ago a
large plundering party, under their chief Mbangera, attacked Sultan
Kalala of the Wasukuma; they were, however, defeated, with the loss of
their leader, by Kafrira of Kivira, the son-in-law of Kalala. They also
ravaged Unyanyembe, and compelled the people to take refuge on the
summit of a natural rock-fortress between Kazeh and Yombo, and they have
more than once menaced the dominions of Fundikira. Those mighty boasters
the Wagogo hold the Warori in awe; as the Arabs say, they shrink small
as a cubit before foes fiercer than themselves. The Warori have wasted
the lands of Uhehe and Unyangwira, and have dispersed the Wakimbu and
the Wamia tribes. They have closed the main-road from the seaboard by
exorbitant blackmail and charges for water, and about five years ago
they murdered two coast Arab traders from Mbuamaji. Since their late
defeat by the Watuta, they have been comparatively quiet. When the E.
African Expedition, however, entered the country they had just
distinguished themselves by driving the herds from Ugogi, and thus
prevented any entrance into their country from that district. Like the
pastoral races generally of this portion of the peninsula, the object
of their raids is cattle: when a herd falls into their hands, they fly
at the beasts like hyænas, pierce them with their assegais, hack off
huge slices, and devour the meat raw.
The Warori are small and shrivelled black savages. Their diminutive size
is doubtless the effect of scanty food, continued through many
generations: the Sultans, however, are a peculiarly fine large race of
men. The slave-specimens observed had no distinguishing mark on the
teeth; in all cases, however, two short lines were tattooed across the
hollow of the temples. The male dress is a cloak of strung beads,
weighing ten or twelve pounds, and covering the shoulders like a
European cape. Some wind a large girdle of the same material round the
waist. The women wear a bead-kilt extending to the knees, or, if unable
to afford it, a wrapper of skin. The favourite weapon is a light, thin,
and pliable assegai; they carry a sheath of about a dozen, and throw
them with great force and accuracy. The bow is unknown. They usually
press to close quarters, each man armed with a long heavy spear. Iron is
procured in considerable quantities both in Ubena and Urori. The
habitations are said to be large Tembe, capable of containing 400 to 500
souls. The principal articles of diet are milk, meat, and especially
fattened dog’s flesh--of which the chiefs are inordinately fond,--maize,
holcus, and millet. Rice is not grown in these arid districts. They
manage their intoxication by means of pombe made of grain and the bhang,
which is smoked in gourd-pipes; they also mix the cannabis with their
vegetable food. The Warori are celebrated for power of abstinence; they
will march, it is said, six days without eating, and they require to
drink but once in the twenty-four hours. In one point they resemble the
Bedouins of Arabia: the chief will entertain his guests hospitably as
long as they remain in his village, but he will plunder them the moment
they leave it.
On the 19th January the expected down-caravan of Wanyamwezi arrived, and
I found no difficulty in completing our carriage--a fair proof, be it
remarked, that I had not lost the confidence of the people. The Mtongi,
however, was, or perhaps pretended to be, ill; we were, therefore,
delayed for another day in a place which had no charms for us.
The 21st January enabled us to bid adieu to Zungomero and merrily to
take the footpath way. We made Konduchi on the 3rd February, after
twelve marches, which were accomplished in fifteen days. There was
little of interest or adventure in this return-line, of which the nine
first stations had already been visited and described. As the Yegea mud,
near Dut’humi, was throat-deep, we crossed it lower down: it was still a
weary trudge of several miles through thick slabby mire, which admitted
a man to his knees. In places, after toiling under a sickly sun, we
crept under the tunnels of thick jungle-growth veiling the Mgazi and
other streams; the dank and fetid cold caused a deadly sensation of
faintness, which was only relieved by a glass of æther-sherbet, a pipe
or two of the strongest tobacco, and half an hour’s repose. By degrees
it was found necessary to abandon the greater part of the remaining
outfit and the luggage: the Wanyamwezi, as they neared their
destination, became even less manageable than before, and the sons of
Ramji now seemed to consider their toils at an end. On the 25th January
we forded the cold, strong, yellow stream of the Mgeta, whose sandy bed
had engulfed my elephant-gun, and we entered with steady hearts the
formerly dreaded Uzaramo. The 27th January saw us pass safely by the
village where M. Maizan came to an untimely end. On that day Ramazan and
Salman, children of Said bin Salim, returned from Zanzibar Island,
bringing letters, clothing, and provisions for their master, who, by way
of small revenge, had despatched them secretly from Zungomero. On the
28th January we reached the Makutaniro or anastomosis of the Kaole and
Mbuamaji roads, where on our ingress the Wazaramo had barred passage in
force. No one now ventured to dispute the way with well-armed paupers.
That evening, however, the Mtongi indulged his men with “maneno,” a
harangue. Reports about fatal skirmishes between the Wazaramo and a
caravan of Wanyamwezi that had preceded us had flown about the camp;
consequently the Mtongi recommended prudence. “There would be danger
to-morrow--a place of ambuscade--the porters must not rise and be off
too early nor too late--they must not hasten on, nor lag behind--they
had with them Wazungu, and in case of accidents they would lose their
name!” The last sentence was frequently repeated with ever increasing
emphasis, and each period of the discourse was marked by a general
murmur, denoting attention.
As I have said, there was no danger. Yet on the next day a report arose
that we were to be attacked in a dense thicket--where no archer, be it
observed, could bend his bow--a little beyond the junction of the
Mbuamaji road with that of Konduchi, our destination. In the afternoon
Said bin Salim, with important countenance, entered my tent and
disclosed to me the doleful tidings. The road was cut off. He knew it. A
great friend of his--a slave--had told him so. He remembered warning me
that such was the case five days ago. I must either delay till an escort
could be summoned from the coast, or--I must fee a chief to precede me
and to reason with the enemy. It was in vain to storm, I feared that
real obstacles might be placed by the timid and wily little man in our
way, and I consented most unwillingly to pay two coloured cloths, and
one ditto of blue-cotton, as hire to guard that appeared in the shape of
four clothless varlets, that left us after the first quarter of an hour.
The Baloch, headed by the Jemadar, knowing that all was safe,
distinguished themselves on that night, for the first time in eighteen
months, by uttering the shouts which prove that the Oriental soldier is
doing “Zam,” _i.e._ is on the _qui vive_. When requested not to make so
much noise they grumbled that it was for our sake, not for theirs.
On the 30th January our natives of Zanzibar screamed with delight at the
sight of the mango-tree, and pointed out to one another, as they
appeared in succession, the old familiar fruits, jacks and pine-apples,
limes and cocoes. On the 2nd February we greeted, with doffed caps and
with three times three and one more, as Britons will do on such
occasions, the kindly smiling face of our father Neptune as he lay
basking in the sunbeams between earth and air. Finally, the 3rd February
1859 saw us winding through the poles decorated with skulls--they now
grin in the Royal College of Surgeons, London--a negro Temple-bar which
pointed out the way into the little maritime village of Konduchi.
Our entrance was attended with the usual ceremony, now familiar to the
reader: the warmen danced, shot, and shouted, a rabble of adults,
youths, and boys crowded upon us, the fair sex lulliloo’d with vigour,
and a general procession conducted their strangers to the hut swept,
cleaned, and garnished for us by old Premji, the principal Banyan of the
head-quarter village, and there stared and laughed till they could stare
and laugh no more.
On the evening of the same day an opportunity offered of transferring
the Jemadar, the Baloch, and my _bête noire_, Kidogo, to their homes in
Zanzibar Island, which lies within sight of Konduchi: as may be
imagined, I readily availed myself of it. After begging powder and _et
cæteras_ to the last, the monocular insisted upon kissing my hand, and
departed weeping bitterly with the agony of parting. By the same boat I
sent a few lines to H. M. consul, Zanzibar, enclosing a list of
necessaries, and requesting that a Battela, or coasting-craft, might be
hired, provisioned, and despatched without delay, as I purposed to
explore the Delta and the unknown course of the Rufiji River. In due
time Said bin Salim and his “children,” including the fair Halimah and
Zawada--the latter was liberally rewarded by me for services rendered to
my companion--and shortly afterwards the sons of Ramji, or rather the
few who had not deserted or lagged behind, were returned to their
master, and were, I doubt not, received with all the kindness which
their bad conduct deserved.
We were detained at Konduchi for six days between the 3rd and 10th
February. There is nothing interesting in this little African village
port: instead of describing it, I will enter into a few details
concerning African matters of more general importance.
[Illustration: The Ivory Porter, the Cloth Porter, and Woman, in
Usagara.]
CHAP. XVIII.
VILLAGE LIFE IN EAST AFRICA.
The assertion may startle the reader’s preconceived opinions concerning
the savage state of Central Africa and the wretched condition of the
slave races, negroid and negro; but is not less true that the African is
in these regions superior in comforts, better dressed, fed, and lodged,
and less worked than the unhappy Ryot of British India. His condition,
where the slave trade is slack, may, indeed, be compared advantageously
with that of the peasantry in some of the richest of European
countries.
[Illustration: THE BASIN OF KISANGA.]
The African rises with the dawn from his couch of cow’s hide. The hut is
cool and comfortable during the day, but the barred door impeding
ventilation at night causes it to be close and disagreeable. The hour
before sunrise being the coldest time, he usually kindles a fire, and
addresses himself to his constant companion, the pipe. When the sun
becomes sufficiently powerful, he removes the reed-screen from the
entrance, and issues forth to bask in the morning-beams. The villages
are populous, and the houses touching one another enable the occupants,
when squatting outside and fronting the central square, to chat and
chatter without moving. About 7 A.M., when the dew has partially
disappeared from the grass, the elder boys drive the flocks and herds to
pasture with loud shouts and sounding applications of the quarter-staff.
They return only when the sun is sinking behind the western horizon. At
8 P.M. those who have provisions at home enter the hut to refection with
ugali or holcus-porridge; those who have not, join a friend. Pombe, when
procurable, is drunk from the earliest dawn.
After breaking his fast the African repairs, pipe in hand, to the
Iwánzá--the village “public,” previously described. Here, in the society
of his own sex, he will spend the greater part of the day, talking and
laughing, smoking, or torpid with sleep. Occasionally he sits down to
play. As with barbarians generally, gambling in him is a passion. The
normal game is our “heads and tails,” its implement a flat stone, a
rough circle of tin, or the bottom of a broken pot. The more civilised
have learned the “bao” of the coast, a kind of “tables,” with counters
and cups hollowed in a solid plank. Many of the Wanyamwezi have been
compelled by this indulgence to sell themselves into slavery: after
playing through their property, they even stake their aged mothers
against the equivalent of an old lady in these lands,--a cow or a pair
of goats. As may be imagined, squabbles are perpetual; they are almost
always, however, settled amongst fellow-villagers with bloodless
weapons. Others, instead of gambling, seek some employment which,
working the hands and leaving the rest of the body and the mind at ease,
is ever a favourite with the Asiatic and the African; they whittle wood,
pierce and wire their pipe-sticks--an art in which all are adepts--shave
one another’s heads, pluck out their beards, eyebrows, and eyelashes,
and prepare and polish their weapons.
At about 1 P.M. the African, unless otherwise employed, returns to his
hut to eat the most substantial and the last meal of the day, which has
been cooked by his women. Eminently gregarious, however, he often
prefers the Iwánzá as a dining-room, where his male children, relatives,
and friends meet during the most important hour of the twenty-four. With
the savage and the barbarian food is the all-in-all of life:--food is
his thought by day,--food is his dream by night. The civilised European,
who never knows hunger or thirst without the instant means of gratifying
every whim of appetite, can hardly conceive the extent to which his wild
brother’s soul is swayed by stomach; he can scarcely comprehend the
state of mental absorption in which the ravenous human animal broods
over the carcase of an old goat, the delight which he takes in
superintending every part of the cooking process, and the jealous eye
with which he regards all who live better than himself.
The principal articles of diet are fish and flesh, grain and vegetables;
the luxuries are milk and butter, honey, and a few fruits, as bananas
and Guinea-palm dates; and the inebrients are pombe or millet-beer,
toddy, and mawa or plantain-wine.
Fish is found in the lakes and in the many rivers of this well-watered
land; it is despised by those who can afford flesh, but it is a
“godsend” to travellers, to slaves, and to the poor. Meat is the diet
most prized; it is, however, a luxury beyond the reach of peasantry,
except when they can pick up the orts of the chiefs. The Arabs assert
that in these latitudes vegetables cause heartburn and acidity, and that
animal food is the most digestible. The Africans seem to have made the
same discovery: a man who can afford it almost confines himself to
flesh, and he considers fat the essential element of good living. The
crave for meat is satisfied by eating almost every description of living
thing, clean or unclean; as a rule, however, the East African prefers
beef, which strangers find flatulent and heating. Like most people, they
reject game when they can command the flesh of tame beasts. Next to the
bullock the goat is preferred in the interior; as indeed it is by the
Arabs of Zanzibar Island; whereas those of Oman and of Western Arabia
abandon it to the Bedouins. In this part of Africa the cheapest and
vilest meat is mutton, and its appearance--pale, soft, and
braxy--justifies the prejudice against it. Of late years it has become
the fashion to eat poultry and pigeons; eggs, however, are still
avoided. In the absence of history and tradition, it is difficult to
decide whether this aversion to eggs arises from an imported or an
indigenous prejudice. The mundane egg of Hindoo mythology probably
typified the physiological dogma “omne vivum ex ovo,” and the mystic
disciples would avoid it as representing the principle of life. In
remote ages the prejudice may have extended to Africa, although the idea
which gave birth to it was not familiar to the African mind. Of wild
flesh, the favourite is that of the zebra; it is smoked or jerked,
despite which it retains a most savoury flavour. Of the antelopes a few
are deliciously tender and succulent; the greater part are black,
coarse, and indigestible. One of the inducements for an African to
travel is to afford himself more meat than at home. His fondness for the
article conquers at times even his habitual improvidence. He preserves
it by placing large lumps upon a little platform of green reeds, erected
upon uprights about eighteen inches high, and by smoking it with a slow
fire. Thus prepared, and with the addition of a little salt, the
provision will last for several days, and the porters will not object to
increase their loads by three or four pounds of the article, disposed
upon a long stick like gigantic kababs. They also jerk their stores by
exposing the meat upon a rope, or spread upon a flat stone, for two or
three days in the sun; it loses a considerable portion of nutriment, but
it packs into a conveniently small compass. This jerked meat, when
dried, broken into small pieces, and stored in gourds or in pots full of
clarified and melted butter, forms the celebrated travelling provision
in the East called kavurmeh: it is eaten as a relish with rice and other
boiled grains. When meat is not attainable and good water is scarce, the
African severs one of the jugulars of a bullock and fastens upon it like
a leech. This custom is common in Karagwah and the other northern
kingdoms, and some tribes, like the Wanyika, near Mombasah, churn the
blood with milk.
The daily food of the poor is grain, generally holcus, maize, or bajri
(panicum); wheat is confined to the Arabs, and rice grows locally, as in
the Indian peninsula. The inner Africans, like the semi-civilised Arabs
of Zanzibar, the Wasawahili, and the Wamrima, ignore the simple art of
leavening bread by acidulated whey, sour bean-paste, and similar
contrivances universally practised in Oman. Even the rude Indian chapati
or scone is too artificial for them, and they have not learned to toast
grain. Upon journeys the African boils his holcus unhusked in an earthen
basin, drinks the water, and devours the grain, which in this state is
called masango; at home he is more particular. The holcus is either
rubbed upon a stone--the mill being wholly unknown--or pounded with a
little water in a huge wooden mortar; when reduced to a coarse powder,
it is thrown into an earthen pot containing boiling water sufficient to
be absorbed by the flour; a little salt, when procurable, is added; and
after a few stirrings with a ladle, or rather with a broad and
flat-ended stick, till thoroughly saturated, the thick mass is
transferred into a porous basket, which allows the extra moisture to
leak out. Such is the ugali, or porridge, the staff of life in East
Africa.
During the rains vegetables are common in the more fertile parts of East
Africa; they are within reach of the poorest cultivator. Some varieties,
especially the sweet potato and the mushroom, are sliced and sun-dried
to preserve them through the year. During the barren summer they are
boiled into a kind of broth.
Milk is held in high esteem by all tribes, and some live upon it almost
exclusively during the rains, when cattle find plentiful pasture. It is
consumed in three forms--“mabichi,” when drunk fresh; or converted into
mabivu (butter-milk), the rubb of Arabs; or in the shape of mtindi
(curded milk), the laban of Arabia, and the Indian dahi. These Africans
ignore the dudh-pinda, or ball of fresh-milk boiled down to hardness by
evaporation of the serum, as practised by the Indian halwaí
(confectioner); the indurated sour-clot of Arabia, called by the
Bedouins el igt, and by the Persians the Baloch, and the Sindhians
kurut, is also unknown; and they consider cheese a miracle, and use
against it their stock denunciation, the danger of bewitching cattle.
The fresh produce, moreover, has few charms as a poculent amongst
barbarous and milk-drinking races: the Arabs and the Portuguese in
Africa avoid it after the sun is high, believing it to increase bile,
and eventually to cause fever: it is certain that, however pleasant the
draught may be in the cool of the morning, it is by no means so much
relished during the heat of the day. On the other hand, the curded milk
is everywhere a favourite on account of its cooling and thirst-quenching
properties, and the people accustomed to it from infancy have for it an
excessive longing. It is procurable in every village where cows are
kept, whereas that newly-drawn is generally half-soured from being at
once stored in the earthen pots used for curding it. These East Africans
do not, however, make their dahi, like the Somal, in lumps floating upon
the tartest possible serum; nor do they turn it, like the Arabs, with
kid’s rennet, nor like the Baloch with the solanaceous plant called
panir. The best is made, as in India, by allowing the milk to stand till
it clots in a pot used for the purpose, and frequently smoked for
purity. Butter-milk is procurable only in those parts of the country
where the people have an abundance of cattle.
Butter is made by filling a large gourd, which acts as churn, with
partially-soured milk, which is shaken to and fro: it is a poor article,
thin, colourless, and tainted by being stored for two or three months,
without preliminary washing, in the bark-boxes called vilindo. In the
Eastern regions it is converted into ghee by simply melting over the
fire: it is not boiled to expel the remnant of sour milk, impurities are
not removed by skimming, and finally it becomes rancid and bitter by
storing in pots and gourds which have been used for the purpose during
half a generation. The Arabs attempt to do away with the nauseous taste
by throwing into it when boiling a little water, with a handful of flour
or of unpowdered rice. Westward of Unyamwezi butter is burned instead of
oil in lamps.
The common oil in East Africa is that of the karanga, bhuiphali, or
ground-nut (Arachis hypogæa): when ghee is not procurable, the Arabs eat
it, like cocoa-nut oil, with beans, manioc, sweet-potato and other
vegetables. A superior kind of cooking is the “uto” extracted from the
ufuta, simsim or sesamum, which grows everywhere upon the coast, and
extends far into the interior. The process of pressing is managed by
pounding the grain dry in a huge mortar; when the oil begins to appear,
a little hot water is poured in, and the mass is forcibly squeezed with
huge pestles; all that floats is then ladled out into pots and gourds.
The viscid chikichi (palm-oil) is found only in the vicinity of the
Tanganyika Lake, although the tree grows in Zanzibar and its adjacent
islets. Oil is extracted from the two varieties of the castor-plant;
and, in spite of its unsavoury smell, it is extensively used as an
unguent by the people. At Unyanyembe and other places where the cucumber
grows almost wild, the Arabs derive from its seed an admirable
salad-oil, which in flavour equals, and perhaps surpasses, the finest
produce of the olive. The latter tree is unknown in East Africa to the
Arabs, who speak of it with a religious respect, on account of the
mention made of it in the Koran.