staff: the education of youth and the exercises of manhood are confined
to the practice of weapons. Yet the people want the expertness of the
Somal of the North and the Kafirs of the South; their internal feuds
perpetuate the necessity of offensive measures, and of the presence of
arms, but their agricultural state, rendering them independent of the
chase, prevents their reliance upon their skill for daily food. In
consequence of being ever armed, the African like the Asiatic is nothing
without his weapons; he cannot use his strength, and when he comes to
blows he fights like a woman. Thus the habitual show of arms is a mere
substitute for courage; in dangerous countries, as in Ugogo, the
Wanyamwezi do not dare to carry them for fear of provocation, whereas at
home and in comparative safety they never appear without spear or
knobstick.
The weapons universally carried are the spear and the assegai. The bow
and arrow, the knobkerry, the dagger, and the battle-axe are confined to
certain tribes, whilst the musket and the sword are used beyond the
coast only by strangers. The shield is seldom seen.
The lance of the European, Arab, and Indian is unknown to these
unequestrian races. The bravest tribes prefer the stabbing-spear, which
brings them to close quarters with the enemy. The weapon indeed cannot
make the man, but by reaction it greatly modifies his manliness. Thus
the use of short weapons generally denotes a gallant nation; the old
Roman gladius, the French briquet, and the Afghan charay would be
useless in the hands of a timid people. Under the impression that the
further men stand from their enemies the less is to be expected from
them, the French knights not inaptly termed the “villanous saltpetre”
the “grave of honour,” whilst their English rivals called the gun a
“hell-born murderer,” and an “instrument hateful in the sight of God and
man.” The Africans have also acted upon this idea. A great Kafir chief
did what Plutarch relates of Camillus: he broke short the assegais of
his “magnificent savages” when he sent them to war, and forbade each
warrior to return without having stained his stick with blood; the
consequence was, that, instead of “dumb-shooting” at a distance, they
rushed in and won.
The mkuki, farárá, or spear, is more generally used for stabbing than
throwing. It has a long narrow blade of untempered iron, so soft that it
may be bent with the fingers; it is capable, however, of receiving a
fine edge. The shoulders are rounded off, and one or two lines extend
lengthways along the centre from socket to point. At the socket where
the shaft is introduced, it its covered with a bit of skin from the tail
of some animal drawn on like a stocking, and sometimes the iron is
forced on when heated, so as to adhere by contraction of the metal. The
shaft, which is five to six feet long, is a branch of the dark-brown
mkole or the light-yellow mtata-tree, chosen because close-grained,
tough, pliable, and free from knots; it is peeled, straightened in hot
ashes, pared down to the heart, smoothed with a knife, carefully oiled
or greased, without which it soon becomes brittle, and polished with the
leaves of the mkuba-tree. The wood is mostly ornamented with twists of
brass and copper wire; it is sometimes plated with zinc or tin, and it
is generally provided with an iron heel for planting in the ground. Some
tribes--the northern Wagogo and their neighbours the Wamasai for
instance--have huge spear-heads like shovels, unfit for throwing. The
best weapons for war are made in Karagwah.
The kikuki, assegai, or javelin, is much used by the Warori and other
fighting tribes, who enter action with a sheaf of those weapons.
Nowhere, however, did the East African appear possessed of the dexterity
described by travellers amongst the southern races. The assegai
resembles the spear in all points, except that the head is often barbed,
and it is more lightly timbered; the shaft is rarely more than four feet
in length, and it tapers to the thinness of a man’s little finger. It is
laid upon the palm of the right hand, and balanced with a vibratory
motion till the point of equilibrium is found, when it is delivered with
little exertion of the muscles beyond the run or spring, and as it
leaves the hand it is directed by the forefinger and thumb. Sometimes,
to obviate breaking, the assegai is made like the Indian “sang,” wholly
of iron.
The East African is a “good archère and a fayre.” The cubit-high Armiger
begins as soon as he can walk with miniature weapons, a cane bow and
reed bird-bolts tipped with wood, to practise till perfect at gourds and
pumpkins; he considers himself a man when he can boast of iron tips.
With many races “pudor est nescire sagittas.” The bravest, however, the
Wamasai and the Wakwafi, the Warori and the Watuta, ignore the practice;
with them--
“No proof of manhood, none
Of daring courage, is the bow;”
and the Somali abandons it to his Midgan or servile. The bow in East
Africa is invariably what is called a “self-bow,” that is to say, made
of a single piece, and backed weapons are unknown. It is uncommonly
stiff, and the strongest archer would find it difficult to “draw up a
yard;” of this nature probably was the bow sent to Cambyses by the
Æthiopian monarch, with the taunting message that he had better not
attack men who could bend such weapons. When straight it may measure
five feet from tip to tip. It is made with the same care as the spear,
from a branch of the mumepweke or the mtata-tree, laboriously cut and
scraped so as to taper off towards the horns, and smeared with oil or
grease, otherwise it is easily sprung, and it is sometimes adorned with
plates of tin and zinc, with copper or brass wire and tips. The string
is made of hide, gut, the tendons of a bullock’s neck or hock, and
sometimes of tree-fibre; it is nearly double the bow in length, the
extra portion being whipped for strength as well as contingent use round
the upper horn. In shooting the bow is grasped with the left hand, but
the thumb is never extended along the back; the string is drawn with the
two bent forefingers, though sometimes the shaft is held after the
Asiatic fashion with the thumb and index. The bow is pulled with a jerk
as amongst the Somal, and not let fly as by Europeans with a long steady
loose. The best bows are made by the tribes near the Rufiji River.
The arrow is about two feet in length; the stele or shaft is made of
some light wood, and often of reed. Its fault is want of weight: to
inflict damage upon an antelope it must not be used beyond point-blank,
fifteen to twenty paces; and a score will be shot into a bullock before
it falls. The musketeer, despising the arrow at a distance, fears it at
close quarters, knowing that for his one shot the archer can discharge a
dozen. From the days of Franklin to the era of Silistria, Citate, and
Kars, fancy-tacticians have advocated the substitution of the bow or the
addition of it to the “queen of weapons,” the musket. Their reasons for
a revival of the obsolete arm are its lightness, its rapidity of
discharge, and its silent action. They forget, however, the saying of
Xenophon, that it is impiety in a man who has not learned archery from
his childhood to ask such boon of the easy gods.
The East Africans ignore the use of red-hot arrows; and the poisoned
shaft, an unmanly weapon, unused by the English and French archers even
in their deadliest wars, is confined to the Wanyika of Mombasah, the
Wazaramo, the Wak’hutu, the Western Wasagara, and the people of Uruwwa.
The Wazaramo and Wak’hutu call the plant from which the poison is
extracted Mkandekande. They sold at somewhat an exorbitant price a leaf
full of the preparation, but avoided pointing out to the expedition the
plant, which from their description appears to be a variety of
euphorbia. M. Werne (“Sources of the White Nile,” chap. viii.) says that
the river tribe prepare their arrow-poison from a kind of asclepias,
whose milky sap is pressed out between two stones and allowed to
thicken. Dr. Livingstone (chap. viii.) mentions the use of the n’gwa
caterpillar amongst the Bushmen, who also poison waters with the
Euphorbia arborescens; and Mr. Andersson (chap. vii.) specifies the
Euphorbia candelabrum amongst the Ovaherero and the Hill Damaras. In
East Africa the poison-leaves are allowed to distil their juices into a
pot, which for inspissation is placed over a slow fire; becoming thick
and slab, the contents are applied with a stick to the arrow, and are
smoothed between the hands. When finished, the part behind the barb is
covered with a shiny brown-black coat, not unlike pitch, to the extent
of four or five inches. After drying it is renewed by the application of
a fresh layer, the old being removed by exposure to the fire. The people
fear this poison greatly; they wash their hands after touching it, and
declare that a wounded man or beast loses sense, “moons about,” and
comes to the ground before running a quarter of a mile. Much
exaggeration, however, must be expected upon the subject of toxicology
amongst barbarians: it acts like the Somali arrow-poison, as a strong
narcotic, and is, probably, rarely fatal, even when freshly applied.
Fearing the action of the wind upon such light shafts if unfledged, the
archer inserts into the cloven end three or four feathers, the
cockfeather being as in Europe perpendicular when the arrow is nocked.
The pile or iron head is curiously and cruelly barbed with long waving
tails; the neck is toothed and edged by dinting the iron when hot with
an axe, and it is sometimes half-sawed that it may break before
extraction. The East Africans also have forkers or two-headed shafts,
and bird-bolts or blunt arrows tipped with some hard wood, used when the
weapon is likely to be lost. Before loosing an arrow the archer throws
into the air a pinch of dust, not to find out the wind, but for good
luck, like the Tartars of Tibet before discharging their guns. In battle
the heavy-armed man holds his spear and a sheaf of spare arrows in the
bow-hand, whilst a quiver slung to the left side contains reserve
missiles, and a little axe stuck in the right side of the girdle is
ready when the rest fail. The ronga or quiver is a bark-case, neatly cut
and stained. It is of two forms, full-length, and provided with a cover
for poisoned, and half-length for unpoisoned, arrows.
The rungu or knobkerry is the African club or mace; it extends from the
Cape to the negroid and the Somal tribes north of the equator. The shape
varies in almost every district: the head is long or round, oval or
irregular, and sometimes provided on one side with an edge; it is cut
out of the hardest wood, and generally from one piece. In some cases the
knob is added to the handle, and in others it is supplied with a
spear-head. The handle is generally two feet long, and it is cut thin
enough to make the weapon top-heavy. The Mnyamwezi is rarely seen abroad
without this weapon; he uses it in the chase, and in battle against the
archer: he seems to trust it in close quarters rather than the
feather-weight arrow or the spear that bends like gutta-percha, and most
murders are committed with it. The East people do not, like the Kafirs,
use the handle of the knobkerry as a dibble.
The sime or dudgeon is the makeshift for the Arab jambiyah and the
Persian khanjar. The form of this weapon differs in almost every tribe.
The Wahumba or Wamasai use blades about four feet long by two fingers in
breadth; the long, round, and guardless hilt is ribbed for security of
grasp, and covered with leather; their iron is of excellent quality, and
the shape of the weapon has given rise to the report that “they make
swords on the model of those of the Knights Templars.” The Wazegura and
the Wagogo use knives not unlike the poniard of the Somal. In some
tribes it is 3·5 feet long, with a leathern sheath extending half-way up
the blade. Generally it is about half that size, straight, pointed, and
double-edged, or jagged with teeth. The regions about the Lake
manufacture and export great numbers of these weapons varying from a
finger’s length to full dimensions.
The shoka or battle-axe is much used by the tribes around the
Tanganyika. It has a blade of triangular shape, somewhat longer and
thinner than that used as a working tool, which is passed through the
bulging head of a short handle cut out of the bauhinia or some other
hard tree. Amongst the Wasagara the peculiar mundu or bill often serves
for the same purpose.
The targes of the Wasagara and the Wanyamwezi have already been
described; the Wavinza make a shield of basket-work six feet by two, and
much resembling that of the southern Kafirs, and the Wa’ungu carry
large pavoises of bull’s hide. It is probable that the exceeding
humidity of the climate, so ruinous to leather, prevents the general
adoption of the shield; on the march it is merely an encumbrance, and
the warrior must carry it on his head beyond the reach of the dewy
grass.
The maritime races, the Wazegura, and others opposite the island of
Zanzibar, have imprudently been allowed to purchase fire-arms, which
they employ in obstructing caravans and in kidnapping-commandos against
their weaker neighbours. A single German house has, it is said, sold off
13,000 Tower muskets in one year. The arms now preferred are those
exported by Hamburg and America; they fetch 4 dollars each; the French
single-barrel is somewhat cheaper, averaging 3 dollars 50 cents. In the
interior fire-arms are still fortunately rare--the Arabs are too wise to
arm the barbarians against themselves. In Unyamwezi an old gun is a
present for a chief, and the most powerful rulers seldom can boast of
more than three. Gunpowder is imported from Zanzibar in kegs of 10 and
25 lbs., bearing the American mark; it is of the description used in
blasting, and fouls the piece after a few discharges. The price varies
at Zanzibar from 3 dollars 50 cents to 7 dollars, and upon the coast
from 5 to 10 dollars per small keg; in Unyamwezi ammunition is exchanged
for ivory and slaves, and some Arab merchants keep as many as thirty
kegs in the house, which they retail to factors and traders at the rate
of 1 to 2 shukkahs per lb.
Swords in East Africa are used only by strangers. The Wasawahili and the
slave-factors prefer the kittareh, a curved sabre made in Oman and
Hazramaut, or, in its stead, an old German cavalry-blade. The Arabs
carry as a distinction the “faranji,” a straight, thin, double-edged,
guardless, and two-handed sword, about four feet long, and sharp as a
carving-knife; the price varies from 10 to 100 dollars.
The negroid is an unmechanical race; his industry has scarcely passed
the limits of savage invention. Though cotton abounds in the interior,
the Wanyamwezi only have attempted a rude loom; and the working of iron
and copper is confined to the Wafyoma and the Lakist races. The gourd is
still the principal succedaneum for pottery. The other branches of
industry which are necessary to all barbarians are mats and baskets,
ropes and cords.
Carpentering amongst the East Africans is still in its rudest stage; no
Dædalus has yet taught them to jag their knives into saws. It is limited
to making the cots and cartels upon which the people invariably sleep,
and to carving canoes, mortars, bowls, rude platters, spoons, stools,
and similar articles of furniture. The tree, after being rung and barked
to dry the juices, is felled by fire or the axe; it is then cut up into
lengths of the required dimensions, and hacked into shape with slow and
painful toil. The tools are a shoka, or hatchet of puerile dimensions,
perhaps one-fifth the size of our broad axes, yet the people can use it
to better advantage than the admirable implement of the backwoodsman.
The mbizo or adze is also known in the interior, but none except the
Fundi and the slaves trained upon the coast have ever seen a hand-saw, a
centre-bit, or a chisel.
Previous to weaving, cotton is picked and cleaned with the hand; it is
then spun into a coarse thread. Like the Paharis of India, the East
Africans ignore the distaff; they twist the material round the left
wrist. The mlavi, or spindle, is of two forms; one is a short stick,
inserted in a hole practised through a lump of lead or burnt clay, like
the Indian bhaunri; the other is a thin bit of wood, about 1·5 ft. long,
with a crescent of the same material on the top, and an iron hook to
hold the thread. The utanda, or loom-frame differs from the
vertical-shaped article of West Africa. Two side-poles about twelve feet
long, and supported at the corners by four uprights, are placed at an
angle, enabling the workman to stand to his work; and the oblong is
completed by two cross-bars, round which the double line of the warp, or
longitudinal threads of the woven tissue, are secured. The dimensions of
the web vary from five to six feet in length, by two to three broad. The
weft, or transverse thread, is shot with two or three thin laths, or
spindles, round which the white and coloured yarns are wound, through
the doubled warp, which is kept apart by another lath passing between
the two layers, and the spindle is caught with the left hand as it
appears at the left side. Lastly, a lath, broader and flatter than the
others, is used to close the work, and to beat the thread home. As the
workman deems three hours per diem ample labour, a cloth will rarely be
finished under a week. Taste is shown in the choice of patterns: they
are sometimes checks with squares, alternately black and white, or in
stripes of black variegated with red dyes upon a white ground: the lines
are generally broad in the centre, but narrow along the edges, and the
texture not a little resembles our sacking. The dark colour is obtained
from the juice of the mzima-tree; it stains the yarn to a dull brown,
which becomes a dark mulberry, or an Indian-ink black, when buried for
two or three days in the vegetable mud of the ponds and pools. The
madder-red is produced by boiling the root and bark of a bush called
mda’a; an ochreish tint is also extracted from the crimson matter that
stains the cane and the leaves of red holcus. All cloths have the tambua
or fringe indispensable in East Africa. Both weaving and dyeing are
men’s not women’s work in these lands.
The cloth is a poor article: like the people of Ashanti, who from time
immemorial have woven their own cottons, the East African ever prefers
foreign fabrics. The loose texture of his own produce admits wind and
rain; when dry it is rough and unpleasant, when wet heavy, comfortless
as leather, and it cannot look clean, as it is never bleached. According
to the Arabs, the yarn is often dipped into a starch made from grain,
for the purpose of thickening the appearance of the texture: this
disappears after the first washing, and the cloth must be pegged down to
prevent its shrinking to half-size. The relative proportion of warp and
weft is unknown, and the woolly fuzzy quality of the half-wild cotton
now in use impoverishes the fabric. Despite the labour expended upon
these cloths, the largest size may be purchased for six feet of American
domestics, or for a pair of iron hoes: there is therefore little
inducement to extend the manufacture.
Iron is picked up in the state called Utundwe, or gangue, from the sides
of low sandstone hills: in places the people dig pits from two to four
feet deep, and, according to the Arabs, they find tears, nodules, and
rounded lumps. The pisolithic iron, common in the maritime regions, is
not worked. The mhesi or blacksmith’s art is still in its infancy. The
iron-stone is carried to the smithy, an open shed, where the work is
done: the smelting-furnace is a hole in the ground, filled with lighted
charcoal, upon which the utundwe is placed, and, covered with another
layer of fire, it is allowed to run through the fuel. The blast is
produced by mafukutu (bellows): they are two roughly rounded troughs,
about three inches deep by six in diameter, hewn out of a single bit of
wood and prolonged into a pair of parallel branches, pierced for the
passage of the wind through two apertures in the walls of the troughs.
The troughs are covered with skin, to which are fixed two long
projecting sticks for handles, which may be worked by a man sitting. A
stone is placed upon the bellows for steadiness, and clay nozzles, or
holcus-canes with a lateral hole, are fixed on to the branches to
prevent them from charring. Sometimes as many as five pairs are worked
at once, and great is the rapidity required to secure a continuous
outdraught. Mr. Andersson (“Lake Ngami,” chap. xvi.) gives a sketch of a
similar contrivance amongst the South Africans: the clay-tubes, however,
are somewhat larger than those used in Unyamwezi by “blacksmiths at
work.” The ore is melted and remelted several times, till pure;
tempering and case-hardening are unknown, and it is stored for use by
being cast in clay-moulds, or made up into hoes. The hammer and anvil
are generally smooth stones. The principal articles of ironmongery are
spears, assegais, and arrow-heads, battle-axes, hatchets, and adzes,
knives and daggers, sickles and razors, rings and sambo, or wire
circlets. The kinda is a large bell, hung by the ivory-porter to his
tusk on the line of the march: the kengere or kiugi a smaller variety
which he fastens to his legs. Pipes, with iron bowls and stems, are made
by the more ingenious, and the smoker manufactures for himself small
pincers or pliers which, curious to say, are unknown even by name to the
more civilised people of Zanzibar.
Copper is not found upon this line in East Africa. From the country of
the Kazembe, however, an excellent red and heavy, soft and bright
variety, not unlike that of Japan, finds its way to Ujiji, and sometimes
to the coast. It is sold in bars from one to two feet long. At Ujiji,
where it is cheap, four to five pounds are procurable for two doti,
there worth about four dollars. Native copper, therefore, is almost as
expensive as that imported from Europe. It is used in making the rude
and clumsy bangles affected by both sexes, sambo, and ornaments for the
spear and bow, the staff and the knobkerry.
[Illustration: Gourds.]
The art of ceramics has made but little progress in East Africa; no
Anacharsis has yet arisen to teach her sons the use of the wheel. The
figuline, a greyish-brown clay, is procured from river-beds, or is dug
up in the country; it is subjected to the preliminary operations of
pounding, rubbing dry upon a stone, pulverising, and purifying from
stones and pebbles. It is then worked into a thick mass, with water, and
the potter fashions it with the hand, first shaping the mouth; he adds
an inch to it when dry, hardens it in the sun, makes another addition,
and thus proceeds till it is finished. Lines and other ornaments having
been traced, the pots are baked in piles of seven or eight, by burning
grass--wood-fire would crack them--consequently the material always
remains half-raw. Usually the colour becomes lamp-black; in Usagara,
however, the potter’s clay burns red, like the soil--the effect of iron.
A cunning workman will make in a day four of these pots, some of them
containing several gallons, and their perfect regularity of form, and
often their picturesqueness of shape, surprise the stranger. The best
are made in Ujiji, Karagwah, and Ugunda: those of Unyamwezi are
inferior, and the clay of Zanzibar is of all the worst.
There are many kinds of pots which not a little resemble the glazed jars
of ancient Egypt. The ukango, which acts as vat in fermenting liquor, is
of the greatest dimensions. The mtungi is a large water-vessel with a
short and narrow neck, and rounded at the bottom so as to be
conveniently carried on the head. The chungu, or cooking-pot, has a wide
and open mouth; it is of several varieties, large and small. The mkungu
is a shallow bowl, precisely like those made at the tomb of Moses, and
now familiar to Europe. At Ujiji and on the Lake they also manufacture
smaller vessels, with and without spouts.