At noon, on the 16th of June, 1857, the corvette Artémise, after the
usual expenditure of gunpowder which must in Eastern lands announce
every momentous event, from the birth of a prince to the departure of a
bishop, slowly gliding out of Zanzibar harbour, afforded us a farewell
glance at the whitewashed mosques and houses of the Arabs, the
cadjan-huts, the cocoa-grown coasts, and the ruddy hills striped with
long lines of clove. Onwards she stole before a freshening breeze, the
balmy breath of the Indian Ocean, under a sun that poured a flood of
sparkling light over the azure depths and the bright green shallows
around, between the “elfin isles” of Kumbeni, with its tall trees, and
Chumbi, tufted with dense thickets, till the white sandstrip mingled
with the blue ocean, the gleaming line of dwarf red cliff and scaur
dropped into the water’s edge, the land faded from emerald to brown, and
from brown to hazy purple, the tufts of the trees seemed first to stand
out of, then to swim upon, the wave, and as evening, the serenest of
tropical evenings, closed in over sky, earth, and sea, a cloud-like
ridge, dimly discernible from our quarter, was all that remained of
Zanzibar.
I will not here stay the course of my narrative to inform the reader
that Zanzibar is not, as the Cyclopædias declare, “an island of Africa,
governed by a king who is subject to the Portuguese;” that it is not, as
the Indian post-offices appear to believe, a part of the Persian Gulf;
nor, as homekeeping folk, whose notions of African geography are
somewhat dim and ill-defined, have mentally determined, a rock in the
Red Sea, nor a dependency of the Niger, nor even an offshoot of the Cape
of Storms.
The Artémise is a kind of “Jackass-frigate,” an 18-gun corvette,
teak-built in Bombay, with a goodly breadth of beam, a slow sailer, but
a sure. In the days of our deceased ally, Sayyid Said, the misnamed
“Imaum of Muscat,” she had so frequently been placed by his Highness at
the disposal of his old friend Lieut.-Colonel Hamerton, that she had
acquired the sobriquet of “the Balyuz or Consul’s yacht.” On this
occasion she had been fitted up for a cruise to the mainland; her yards,
usually struck, had been swayed up and thrown across; her top spars had
been transferred from the hold to their proper place; her ropes and
rigging, generally hanging in tatters about her sticks, had been
carefully overhauled; her old sails had been bent, and her usual crew, a
few slaves that held their own with difficulty against a legion of rats
and an army of cockroaches, had been increased to its full complement of
twenty men. His Highness the Sayyid Majid, who after the demise of his
father had assumed the title of “Sultan of Zanzibar and the Sawahil,”
came on board accompanied by his four brothers, of whom two--Sayyids
Jamshid and Hamdan--died of small-pox before our return, and one--Sayyid
Barghash--has lately become a state prisoner at Bombay, to bid what
proved a last adieu to his father’s friend. At the same time His
Highness honoured me, through his secretary, Ahmed bin Nuuman, more
generally known as Wajhayn, or “Two-faces,” with three letters of
introduction, to Musa Mzuri, the Indian doyen of the merchants settled
at Unyamwezi, to the Arabs there resident, and to all his subjects who
were travelling into the interior.
The Artémise conveyed the _personnel_ and the _matériel_ of the East
African Expedition, namely, the two European members--my companion and
myself--two Portuguese, or rather half-caste Goanese “boys,” two Negro
gun-carriers, the Seedy Mubarak Mombai (Bombay), and Muinyi Mabruki, his
“brother,” and finally, eight so-called “Baloch” mercenaries, a guard
appointed by the Sultan to accompany me. Lieut.-Colonel Hamerton, at
that time Her Majesty’s consul and Hon. East India Company’s agent at
Zanzibar, though almost lethargic from the effects of protracted
illness--he lived only in the evening--had deemed it his duty to land us
upon the coast, and to superintend our departure from the dangerous
seaboard. He was attended by Mr. Frost, the apothecary attached to the
consulate, whose treatment for a fatal liver-complaint appeared to
consist of minute doses of morphia and a liberal diet of sugar.
By Lieut.-Colonel Hamerton’s advice, I ventured to modify the scheme of
the East African Expedition, as originally proposed by the Expeditionary
Committee of the Royal Geographical Society of London. In 1855, M.
Erhardt, an energetic member of the hapless “Mombas Mission,” had on his
return to London offered to explore a vast mass of water, about the size
of the Caspian, which, from the information of divers “natives,” he had
deposited in slug or leech shape in the heart of Intertropical Africa,
thus prolonging the old “Maravi,” or “Moravim Lake” of Portuguese
travellers and school atlases, to the north of the equator, and thus
bringing a second deluge upon sundry provinces and kingdoms thoroughly
well known for the last half century. He had proposed to land, with an
outfit of 300 dollars[1], at Kilwa, one of the southern ports of the
Zanzibar mainland, to hire a score of Wasawahili porters, to march with
a caravan upon the nearest point of his own water, and to launch an
adventurous canoe upon a lake which, according to his map, could not be
traversed under twenty-five days. Messrs. Erhardt and Krapf, of the
“Mombas Mission,” spent, it is true, a few hours at Kilwa, where they
were civilly entreated by the governor and the citizens; but they
egregiously deceived themselves and others, when they concluded that
they could make that place their ingress-point. Lieut. Christopher,
I.N., who visited the East African coast in 1843, wisely advised
explorers to avoid the neighbourhood of Kilwa. Wisely, I repeat: the
burghers of that proud old settlement had, only a year before my
arrival, murdered, by means of the Wangindo savages, an Arab merchant
who ventured to lay open the interior.
[1] The sum was wholly inadequate. M. Erhardt has, I have been told,
expended as much on a week’s march from Pangani Town to Fuga. The
smallest of Wasawahili pedlars would hardly deem an outfit of 300
dollars sufficient. M. Erhardt was, even according to his own reduced
ideas of distance, to march with twenty followers 400 miles, and to
explore a lake 300 miles in breadth and of unknown length. In 1802,
when cloth and beads were twice their present value in Africa, the
black Pombeiros sent by M. Da Costa, superintendent of the “Cassangi
Factory,” carried with them for the necessary expenses and presents,
goods to the value of nearly 500_l._ M. Erhardt’s estimate was highly
injurious to future travellers: either he knew the truth, and he
should have named at once a reasonable estimate, or he was ignorant of
the subject, and he should have avoided it. The consequence of his
proposal was simply this:--With 5000_l._ instead of 1000_l._, the
limited sum of the Government grant, the East African Expedition could
have explored the whole central area; nothing but the want of supplies
caused their return at the time when, after surmounting sickness,
hardship, and want of discipline amongst the party, they were ready to
push to the extreme end.
At the same time I had laid before the Council of the Royal Geographical
Society my desire to form an expedition primarily for the purpose of
ascertaining the limits of the “Sea of Ujiji, or Unyamwezi Lake,” and
secondarily, to determine the exportable produce of the interior, and
the ethnography of its tribes. I have quoted exactly the words of the
application. In these days every explorer of Central Africa is supposed
to have set out in quest of the coy sources of the White Nile, and when
he returns without them, his exploration, whatever may have been its
value, is determined to be a failure. The Council honoured my plans with
their approval. At their solicitation, the Foreign Office granted the
sum of 1000_l._ for the outlay of the exploration, and the defunct Court
of Directors of the late East India Company, who could not be persuaded
to contribute towards the expenses, generously allowed me two years’
leave of absence from regimental duty, for the purpose of commanding the
Expedition. I also received instructions to report myself to his
Excellency the Lord Elphinstone, then Governor of Bombay, and to
Lieut.-Colonel Hamerton, from whose influence and long experience much
was expected.
When the starting-point came to be debated, the Consul strongly objected
to an Expedition into the interior _viâ_ Kilwa, on account of the
opposition to be expected at a port so distant from the seat of
government, where the people, half-caste Arabs and Wasawahili, who are
under only a nominal control, still retained a strong predilection for
protection, and a violent hostility to strangers. These reasons led him
to propose my landing upon the coast opposite Zanzibar, and to my thence
marching with a strong escort, despatched by the Arab prince, through
the maritime tribes, whose cruel murder of M. Maizan, the first European
known to have penetrated beyond the sea-board, was yet fresh in the
memories of men. This notion was accepted the more readily, as during my
short preliminary sojourn at Zanzibar, I had satisfactorily ascertained
from Arab travellers that the Maravi or Kilwa Lake is distinct from the
“Sea of Ujiji;” that the former is of comparatively diminutive
dimensions; that there is no caravan route between the two; and
therefore that, by exploring the smaller, I should lose the chance of
discovering the larger water. Moreover, the general feeling of the
Zanzibarites--of the Christian merchants, whom I had offended by
collecting statistics about copal-digging, ivory, and sesamum--of the
Bhattias or Hindus of Cutch, who systematically abuse the protection of
the British flag to support the interest of the slave trade--of the
Arabs, who remembered nothing but political intrigue in the explorations
of the “Mombas Mission,” and the lamentable result of Dr. Krapf’s
political intrigues--and of the Africans generally, who are disposed to
see in every innovation some new form of evil--had been conveyed to my
ears explicitly enough to warrant my apprehensions for the success of
the Expedition, had I insisted upon carrying out the project proposed by
M. Erhardt.
I must here explain, that before my departure from England, the Church
Missionary Society had supplied me, after a personal interview in
Salisbury Square, with a letter to their _employé_, M. Rebmann, the last
remnant of that establishment at Mombasah, which had, it is said,
expended about 12,000_l._ with the minimest of results. The missionaries
had commenced operations with vigour, and to the work of conversion they
had added certain discoveries in the unknown lands of the interior,
which attracted the attention of European geographers. Unhappily Dr.
Krapf, the principal, happened to commit himself by the following
assertion:--“The Imaum of Muskat has not an inch of ground on the coast
between the Island of Wassin and the Pangani River; this tract, in fact,
belonging to King Kmeri of Usumbara, down from 4° 30′ to 5° 30′ S. The
tract, which is very low, is inhabited by the Wasegua tribes, and is the
chief slave-market for supplying Zanzibar.”
This “information,” put forth in the Journal of the Royal Geographical
Society (vol. i. p. 203), was copied into the Proceedings (vol. xxiii.
p. 106), with the remark, that the territory alluded to was a “supposed
possession” of the Imaum. Orientals are thin-skinned upon questions of
land; the assertion was directly opposed to fact, and the jealousy of
the rival representatives at Zanzibar each on his own side, exaggerated
its tendency. Lieut.-Colonel Hamerton, who felt his influence sapped by
this error on the part of his protégé, had reported the facts to his
government. Dr. Krapf had quitted the scene of his labours and
discoveries, but his Highness the Sultan and the sadat, or court,
retained a lively remembrance of the regretable incident. Before the
arrival of the Expedition, “Muhiyy-el-Din,” the Shafei Kazi of the
island, had called upon Lieut.-Colonel Hamerton, probably by direction
of his superiors, and had received an answer, fortified by an oath, that
the Expedition was wholly independent of “Dutchmen,” as the missionaries
were called by the Zanzibarites. I was compelled, somewhat unwillingly,
to dispense with urging M. Rebmann’s presence. By acting in any other
way I should have lost the assistance of the consul, and the Arabs, with
a ready display of zeal, would have secured for me an inevitable
failure.
At six P.M. on Wednesday, the 17th of June, 1857, the Artémise cast
anchor off Wale Point, a long, low bush-grown sandspit, about
eighty-four miles distant from the little town of Bagamoyo. Our
sailing-master, Mohammed bin Khamis, anchored in deep water, throwing
out double the length of chain required. For this prudence, however,
there was some reason. The road-steads are open; the muddy bottom
shelves gradually, almost imperceptibly; the tides retire ten or eleven
feet, and a strong gale, accompanied by the dangerous raz de marée, or
rollers from seaward, especially at the seasons of the syzygies, with
such a shore to leeward, is justly dreaded by the crews of square-rigged
vessels.
There is a something peculiarly interesting in the first aspect of the
“Mrima,” the hill-land, as this portion of the African coast is called
by the islanders of Zanzibar. On one side lies the Indian Ocean,
illimitable towards the east, dimpled with its “anerithmon gelasma,” and
broken westward by a thin line of foam, creaming upon the whitest and
finest of sand, the detritus of coralline and madrepore. It dents the
coast deeply, forming bays, bayous, lagoons, and backwaters, where,
after breaking their force upon bars and black ledges of sand and rock,
upon diabolitos, or sun-stained masses of a coarse conglomerate, and
upon strong weirs planted in crescent shape, the waters lie at rest in
the arms of the land like sheets of oil. The points and islets formed by
these sea-streams are almost flush with the briny surface, yet they are
overgrown with a profuse vegetation, the result of tropical suns and
copious showers, which supply the want of rich soil. The banks of the
backwaters are lined with forests of white and red mangrove. When the
tide is out, the cone-shaped root-work supporting each tree rises naked
from the deep sea-ooze; parasitical oysters cluster over the trunks at
water-level, and between the adults rise slender young shoots, tipped
with bunches of brilliant green. The pure white sand is bound together
by a kind of convolvulus, whose large fleshy leaves and lilac-coloured
flowers creep along the loose soil. Where raised higher above the ocean
level, the coast is a wall of verdure. Plots of bald old trees, bent by
the regular breezes, betray the positions of settlements which,
generally sheltered from sight, besprinkle the coast in a long
straggling line, like the suburbs of a populous city. Of these, thirteen
were counted in a space of three miles. The monotony of green that
clothes the soil is relieved in places by dwarf earth-cliffs and scaurs
of rufous hue--East Africa is mostly a red land--and behind the
foreground of littoral or alluvial plain, at a distance varying from
three to five miles, rises a blue line of higher level, conspicuous even
from Zanzibar Island, the sandy raised beach now the frontier of the
wild men. To this sketch add its accompaniment; by day, the plashing of
the wave, and the scream of the gull, with the perpetual hum and buzz of
insect life; and, after sunset, the deep, dead silence of a tropical
night, broken only by the roar of the old bull-crocodile at his
resting-time, the qua-qua of the night-heron, and the shouts and shots
of the watchmen, who know from the grunts of the hippopotamus,
struggling up the bank, that he is quitting his watery home to pay a
visit to their fields.
We were delayed ten days off Wale Point by various preliminaries to
departure. Said bin Salim, a half-caste Arab of Zanzibar, who, sorely
against his will, was ordered by the prince to act as Ras Kafilah, or
caravan-guide, had, after ceaseless and fruitless prayers for delay,
preceded us about a fortnight, for the purpose of collecting porters.
The timid little man, whose nerves were shaken to weeping-point by the
terrors of the way, and by the fancy that, thus cooperating with the
exploration, he was incurring the hatred of his fellows, had “taken the
shilling,” in the shape of 500 dollars, advanced from public funds by
the consul, with a promise of an ample reward in hard coin, and a gold
watch, “si se bene gesserit:” at the same time Lieut.-Colonel Hamerton
had warned me against trusting to a half-caste. Accompanied by a Cutch
Banyan of the Bhattia caste, by name Ramji--of whom more anon--he had
crossed over, on the 1st of June, to the main-land, and had hired a gang
of porters, who, however, hearing that their employer was a Muzungu, a
“white man,” at once dispersed, forgetting to return their hire. About
one hundred and seventy men were required; only thirty-six were
procurable. The large amount of carriage was necessitated by the bulky
and ponderous nature of African specie, cotton cloth, brass-wire, and
beads, of which a total of seventy loads was expended in one year and
nine months. Moreover, under the impression that “vert and venison”
abounded in the interior, I had provided ammunition for two years,--ten
thousand copper-caps of sizes, forty boxes, each restricted, for
convenience of porterage, to forty pounds, and containing ball, grape,
and shot, six fire-proof magazines, and two small barrels of fine
powder, weighing in total fifty pounds, together with four ten-pound
kegs of a coarser kind for the escort,--in all, two hundred rounds for
each individual of the party. This supply was deemed necessary on
account of the immense loss to which ammunition is subjected by theft
and weather in these lands.
On the second day after anchoring off Wale Point, a native boat brought
on board the Artémise Ladha Damha, the collector of customs at Zanzibar,
who, in compliment to Lieut.-Colonel Hamerton, of old his friend and
patron, had torn himself from his beloved occupations to push the
departure of the Expedition. Ladha, hearing that the Arab merchants had
hastened to secure their gangs before corrupted by the more liberal
offers of the “white men,”--“Pagazi,” or porters, being at that time
scarce, because the caravans from the interior had not yet reached the
coast,--proposed to send forward the thirty-six fellows hired by Said
bin Salim, with orders to await the arrival of their employer at
Zungomero, in the land of K’hutu, a point situated beyond the plundering
maritime tribes. These men carried goods to the value of 654 dollars
German crowns (each 4_s._ 2_d._), and they received for hire 124
dollars; rations, that is to say, 1·50 lbs. of grain per diem, not
included: they preferred to travel with the escort of two
slave-musketeers rather than to incur the fancied danger of accompanying
a “Muzungu,” though followed by a well-armed party. For the personal
baggage and the outfit necessary for crossing the maritime region, which
reached by waste the figure of 295 dollars, asses were proposed by Ladha
Damha: Zanzibar and the mainland harbours were ransacked, and in a short
time thirty animals, good, bad, and indifferent, were fitted for the
roads with large canvas bags and vile Arab packsaddles, composed of
damaged gunny-bags stuffed with straw. It was necessary to leave behind,
till a full gang of porters could be engaged, the greater part of the
ammunition, the iron boat which had proved so useful on the coasting
voyage to Mombasah, and the reserve supply of cloth, wire, and beads,
valued at 359 dollars. The Hindus promised faithfully to forward these
articles, and received 150 dollars for the hire of twenty-two men, who
were to start in ten days. Nearly eleven months, however, elapsed before
they appeared; caravan after caravan came up from the coast, yet the
apathetic Bhattias pretended want of porters as the cause of their
delay. Evidently my preparations were hurriedly made; strong reasons,
however, urged me on,--delay, even for a few days, might have been
fatal.
During the brief detention off Wale Point, the latitudes and longitudes
of the estuary of the Kingani, the main artery of these regions, and of
the little settlements Bagamoyo and Kaole,--strongly against the advice
of Lieut.-Colonel Hamerton, who declared that by such proceedings the
Expedition was going to the bad,--were laid down by my companion: a
novice lunarian, he was assisted by Mohammed bin Khamis, who had read
his “Norie” in England. Various visits to the hippopotamus haunts
produced little beyond the damaging of the corvette’s gig, which,
suddenly uplifted from the water upon the points of two tusks, showed
two corresponding holes in her bottom. Nor did I neglect to land as
often as possible at Kaole, the point of departure upon the mainland,
for the purpose of making sketches with the pen and pencil, of urging on
preparations, and of gathering those items of “bazar-gup,” _i. e._,
tittle-tattle, that represents the labours of the “fourth estate” in
Eastern lands.
The little settlement of “Kaole”--an abbreviation of Kaole Urembo,
meaning literally, in the ancient dialect of the coast, “to show
beauty”--is the normal village-port in these regions, which, from
Mombasah southwards to Kilwa, still ignore a town of masonry. You land,
when the tide is out, upon half a mile of muddy sand, and if a “swell,”
you are carried by four men upon the Kitanda--cot or cartel--which is
slung along the side of your craft. Arrived at the strip of dry ground
that marks the limit of the tide, you are let down, and amidst the
shouts of the men, the shrieks of the women, and the naïve remarks of
the juvenile population, you ascend by a narrow footpath, worn through
the thick jungle and through the millet-fields which press upon the
tattered palisade, a dwarf steep bank, on whose summit the settlement
lies. Inside the fence are a dozen pent-roofed houses, claret-chests of
wattle and dab, divided into three or more compartments by dwarf
party-walls of the same material: each messuage is jealously separated
from its neighbour by large enclosed “compounds” or court-yards
appropriated to the women and children. The largest timber is that of
the mangrove; the flying thatch-roof, so raised that, though windows are
unknown, the interior enjoys tolerable ventilation, is of jauli, or rude
cocoa-plaits, and under the long and projecting eaves, which rest upon
strong perpendiculars, are broad earth-benches, divided by the entrance,
and garnished with mats: these form the shops and sitting-rooms of the
settlement. Some houses have a partial second story, like a ship’s bunk,
a planking supported by rafters, and used as a store-closet or a
dormitory. Around the larger habitations cluster masses of hovels, and
the characteristic African haycock-huts. With closed doors in still
weather, these dens are unendurable to a European; the people, however,
fearing thieves and wild beasts, never fail to barricade themselves
within at night. The only attempt at masonry in the settlement is the
“Gurayza,” or fort, a square of lime and coralline, with store-rooms for
the Banyan’s goods below, and provided with a crenelled terrace for
watchmen.
In the “garrison-towns” the soldiers and their families form the
principal part of the population. These men, who call themselves Baloch,
are, with few exceptions, originally from Mekran, and from the lowlands
about Guadel. Many of them have been born and bred in Arabia. In former
days their fathers migrated from their starving homes to Maskat, in the
Arab dows which visited their ports, to buy horses, and to collect
little cargoes of wheat and salt. In Arabia they were fakirs, sailors,
porters, and day-labourers, barbers, date-gleaners, asinegos, beggars,
and thieves. Sultan Bin Hamid, the father of the late Sayyid Said, first
conceived the bright idea of putting matchlocks into their hands, and of
dubbing them Askar, or soldiers, as a slight upon his less docile
compatriots. The son of Sultan followed his sire’s plan, and succeeded
in dividing and ruling by means of the antipathy prevailing between the
more disciplinable mercenary and the unruly Arab subject. The Baloch
are, however, rather hated than feared. They hang, say the Semites,
their benefits behind their backs, whilst they wear their grievances in
full view, woman-like, upon their breasts. Loud in debate, and turbulent
in demeanour, they are called by the Arabs a “light folk,” and are
compared to birds fluttering and chirruping round a snake. Abject slaves
to the Great Gaster, they collect in swarms round a slaughtered goat,
and they will feast their eyes for hours on the sight of a rice-bag.
When in cantonment on the island or the coast, they receive as pay from
2·50 to 5 dollars per mensem; when in the field or on outpost duty, a
“batta” of 10 dollars;--a sensible system, which never allows them to
become, like the Indian Sepoy, independent. They are not averse to
active service, as, when so employed, they have full permission to “pill
and poll.” In camp they are commanded by a jemadar, who, assisted by a
“moollah,”--some wretch who has retained, as sole traces of his better
days, a smattering of reading, writing, and arithmetic,--robs them and
his government with the recklessness of impunity. Thus the jemadar, or
C. O., who also dispenses promotion, is a man having authority.
Similarly our colonels in India, by superior position and allowances,
commanded the respect of their men before centralisation, falling upon
the land like a pestilence, systematically monopolised all power, and
then rained blame upon those who had lost it. These Baloch are a tame
copy of the Turkish Bashi Buzuk, or “mad-cap,” far inferior as
desperadoes to the Kurd and Arnaut. They live the life of the
Anglo-Indian soldier of the past generation, drinking beer when they can
“come by it,” smoking, chatting, and arguing; the younger wrestle,
shoot, and exchange kit; and the silly babbling patriarchs, with white
beards and venerable brows, tell wondrous tales of scenes long gone by,
and describe to unbelieving ears the ice and snow, the luscious fruits
and the sweet waters of the mountains and valleys of far Balochistan.
The other items of the population are the Wamrima[2]--Western Negroids
of a mixed Arab and African descent, who fringe the shore in a thin
line. These “coast-clans” support themselves in idleness and comparative
luxury, by amicably plundering the down-caravans, and by large
plantations of cereals and vegetables, with which they, or rather their
slaves, supply the island of Zanzibar, and even the shores of Arabia.
The Wamrima are an ill-conditioned race; they spend life in eating,
drinking, and smoking, drinking and dancing, visits, intrigue, and low
debauchery. They might grow cotton and coffee, and dig copal to almost
any extent; but whilst a pound of grain remains in bin, no man will
handle a hoe. The feminine part of the community is greatly superior in
number to the masculine, and this leads to the usual result: on a “Siku
ku” or fête-day, the ladies of the village, with yellow pigment over
their faces and their woolly heads, perform in their cups
impromptu-dances upon the open, enter a stranger’s house as if it were
their own, and call for something to drink, as if they had been educated
at Cremorne, or the Rue Cadet. The Wamrima are ruled by Diwans, or
headmen, locally called “Chomwi;” these officials are subject to
Zanzibar, and their numbers are everywhere in inverse ratio to the
importance of the places. The Chomwi enjoys the privileges of “dash,”
fines and extortions; he has also certain marks of distinction. For
instance, he is authorised to wear turbands and the wooden pattens
called by the Arabs “kabkab;” he may also sit upon cots, chairs, and the
mkeka, a fine dyed mat; whereas a commoner venturing upon such display
would infallibly be mulcted in goats or cattle. At the Ngoma Ku or great
dance, which celebrates every event in this land of revelry, only the
Chomwi may perform the morris with drawn sword before the admiring
multitude. A subject detected in intrigue with the wife of a headman
must, under penalty of being sold, pay five slaves; the fine is reduced
to one head in the case of a plebeian. With this amount of dignity the
Diwan naturally expects to live, and to support his family with the fat
of the land, and without sweat of brow. When times are hard, he
organises a kidnapping expedition against a weaker neighbour, and fills
his purse by selling the proceeds. But his income is derived chiefly
from the down-caravans bringing ivory and slaves from Unyamwezi and the
far interior. Though rigidly forbidden by the Prince of Zanzibar to
force caravans to his particular port, he sends large armed parties of
his kinsmen and friends, his clients and serfs, as far as 150 and 200
miles inland, where they act less like touters than highwaymen. By every
petty art of mercantile diplomacy,--now by force, then by fraud, by
promises, or by bribes of cloth and sweetmeats,--they induce the caravan
to enter the village, when the work of plunder begins. Out of each
Frasilah (thirty-five lbs. avoirdupois) of ivory, from eight to fourteen
dollars are claimed as duties to the Government of Zanzibar; the
headmen, then, demand six dollars as their fee, under various technical
names, plus one dollar for “ugali” or porridge--the “manche,”--and one
dollar for the use of water--the “pour boire.” The owner of the tusk is
then handed over to the tender mercies of the Banyan, from whom the
Diwan has received a bribe, called his “rice”; and the crafty Hindu buys
for eighteen to twenty dollars an article worth, at Zanzibar, fifty. If
the barbarian be so unwise as to prefer cash, being intellectually unfit
to discriminate between a cent and a dollar, he loses even more than if
he had taken in barter the coarse and trashy articles provided for him
by the trade. An adept at distinguishing good from bad cloth and a
cunning connoisseur in beads of sorts, he has yet no choice: if he
reject what is worthless, he must return home with his ivory and without
an investment. Such is an outline of the present system. It is nowhere
the same in its details; but everywhere the principle is one--the loss
is to the barbarian, and the profits are to the coast-clans, the Wamrima
and their headmen. Hence the dislike to strangers and the infinite
division into little settlements, where people might be expected to
prefer the comfort and safety of large communities. The 10th article of
the commercial treaty, concluded on the 31st May, 1839, between Her
Majesty’s Government and His Highness Sayyid Said of Muscat and
Zanzibar, secured to the possessors of the Mrima a monopoly in the
articles of ivory and gum-copal on that part of the east coast of Africa
from the port of Tangata (Mtangata), situated in about 5½° S. lat. to
the port of Quiloa (Kilwa) lying in about 7° S. of the equator. It is
not improbable that the jealousy of European nations, each fearing the
ambitious designs of its neighbour, brought about this invidious
prohibitionist measure.
[2] It must be borne in mind, that, in the Kisawahili and its
cognates, the vowel _u_ prefixed to a root, which, however, is never
used without some prefix, denotes, through a primary idea of
causality, a country or region, as Uzaramo, the region of Zaramo. Many
names, however, exceptionally omit this letter, as the Mrima, K’hutu,
Fuga, and Karagwah. The liquid _m_, or, before a vowel and an
aspirated h, _mu_, to prevent hiatus, being probably a synæresis of
_M_tu, a man, denotes the individual, as Mzaramo, a man or woman of
Zaramo. When prefixed to the names of trees, as has been instanced, it
is evidently an abbreviation of Mti, a tree. The plural form of _m_
and _mu_ is Wá, a contraction of Wátu, men, people; it is used to
signify the population, as Wamrima, the “coast-clans,” Wazaramo, the
people or tribe of Zaramo, and Wasawahíli (with a long accent upon the
penultimate, consonant with the spirit of the African language, and
contrary to that of the Arabic), the population of the Sawahil.
Finally, the syllable _ki_--prefixed to the theoretical root--denotes
anything appertaining to a country, as the terminating _ish_ in the
word English. It especially refers in popular usage to language, as
Kizaramo, the language of Zaramo; Kisawahíli, the language of the
Sawahil, originally called Ki-ngozi, from the district of Ngozi, on
the Ozi River. It has been deemed advisable to retain these terse and
concise distinctions, which, if abandoned, would necessitate a weary
redundance of words.
Besides the Baloch and the Wamrima, the settlements usually contain a
few of the “Washenzi” or barbarians from the interior, who visit them to
act as day-labourers, and who sometimes, by evincing a little disrespect
for the difference between the “mine” and the “thine,” leave their heads
to decorate tall poles at the entrance. The Wazaramo tribe send, when
there is no blood-feud, numbers to Kaole, where they are known by their
peculiar headdress, a single or a double line of pips or dilberries of
ochre and grease surrounding the head. They regard the stranger with a
wild and childish stare, and whenever I landed, they slunk away from me,
for reasons which will appear in the course of this narrative. The list
of floating population concludes with a few Banyans,--there are about
fifty in Kaole and its vicinity--a race national as the English, who do
their best to import into Eastern Africa the cows and curries, the
customs and the costumes, of Western India.
The first visit to Kaole opened up a vista of unexpected difficulties.
My escort had been allowed to leave the Artémise, and their comrades in
arms had talked them half-crazy with fear. Zahri, a Baloch, who had
visited Unyamwezi, declared that nothing less than 100 guards, 150 guns,
and several cannon could enable them to fight a way through the perils
of the interior. Tulsi, the Banyan, warned them that for three days they
must pass amongst savages, who sit on trees and discharge poisoned
arrows into the air with such dexterity that they never fail to fall
upon the travellers’ pate; he strongly advised them therefore, under
pain of death, to avoid trees--no easy matter in a land all forest. Then
the principal Chomwi assured them that the chiefs of the Wazaramo tribe
had sent six several letters to the officials of the coast forbidding
the white man to enter their country. Ladha Damha also obscurely hinted
that the Wazaramo might make caches of their provisions in the jungle,
and that the human stomach cannot march without feeding. Divers dangers
of the way were incidentally thrown in: I learned for the first time
that the Kargadan or rhinoceros kills 200 men, that armies of elephants
attack camps by night, and that the craven hyæna does more damage than
the Bengal tiger. In vain I objected that guns with men behind them are
better than cannon backed by curs, that mortals can die but once, that
the Wazaramo are unable to write, that rations might be carried where
not purchaseable, and that powder and ball have been known to conquer
rhinoceroses, elephants, and hyænas. A major force was against me.
Presently the cause of intimidation crept into sight. The Jemadar and
the eight Baloch detached by His Highness the Sayyid Majid of Zanzibar
could not march without a reinforcement of four others, afterwards
increased by a fifth in the person of an “Ustad,” a tailor-boy. The
garrison of Kaole having no employment, was ready, with the prospect of
the almighty dollar, to march anywhere on this side of Jehannum. The
perils of the path rendered it absolutely necessary that we should be
escorted by a temporary guard of thirty-four men and their Jemadar
Yaruk: and they did not propose to do the good deed gratis. Ramji, the
Banyan clerk of the customs at Zanzibar, had a number of slaves whom he
called his “sons;” they were “eating off their heads” in idleness at
Zanzibar. He favoured me by letting out ten of these youths at the rate
of thirty dollars ahead for a period of six months: for the same sum
every man might have been purchased in the market. When asses were
proposed ass-men were necessary; in the shortest space of time five were
procured, and their pay for the whole journey was fixed at thirty
dollars, about twice the sale-value of the article. I cannot plead
guilty to not having understood the manœuvre,--a commercial speculation
on the part of the rascal Ramji. Yet at times,--need I say it?--it is
good to appear a dupe. It is wise, when your enemies determine you to be
that manner of sable or ermine contrivance into which ladies insert
their fair hands, to favour the hypothesis. I engaged the men, I paid
the men, and mentally I chronicled a vow that Ramji should in the long
run change places with me.
Presently Mr. Frost with brow severe and official manner, informed me
that the state of Lieut.-Colonel Hamerton’s health forbade a longer stay
near the coast. To this there was no reply: I contented myself with
remarking once more that morphia appeared a curious cure for a confirmed
liver complaint, and I made preparations for landing at once. Mr. Frost
replied that the doses of morphia were very “little ones,”--an excuse
which, according to Capt. Marryat, has been urged under somewhat
dissimilar circumstances by the frail ancilla. I confided to Mr. Frost’s
care two MSS. addressed through the Foreign Office, one to Mr. John
Blackwood, the other to Dr. Norton Shaw, of the Royal Geographical
Society. As the former arrived in safety, whilst the latter,--a detailed
report concerning the commerce and capabilities of Zanzibar,--was lost,
I cannot help suspecting that it came somehow to an untimely end.
Lieutenant-Colonel Hamerton had repeatedly warned me that by making
inquiries into the details of profit I was exciting the jealousy of the
natives and the foreigners of Zanzibar. According to him the mercantile
community was adopting the plan which had secured the foul murder of M.
Maizan: the Christians had time and opportunity to alarm the Banyans,
and the latter were able to work upon the Wasawahíli population. These
short-sighted men dreaded that from throwing open the country,
competition might result: Oriental-like, thinking only of the moment, of
themselves, they could not perceive that the development of resources
would benefit all concerned in their exploitation. There were, however,
honourable exceptions, amongst whom I am bound to mention M. Bérard,
agent to Mess. Rabaud, frères, of Marseilles, who by direction of his
employers offered me every manner of assistance; and the late M. Sam.
Masury, a Salem merchant, to whose gratuitous kindness I was indebted
for several necessaries when separated from civilisation by one half of
Africa. They contrasted sharply with the rest of the community: in the
case of a certain young gentleman, Lieut.-Colonel Hamerton was,--he
informed me,--compelled to threaten a personal chastisement, unless he
ceased to fill native ears with his malignant suspicions.
The weary labour of verifying accounts and of writing receipts duly
concluded, I took a melancholy leave of my warm-hearted friend
Lieut.-Colonel Hamerton, upon whose form and features death was written
in legible characters. He gave me his last advice, to march straight
ahead despising “walnut and velvet-slipper men,” who afford opinions,
and conciliating the Arabs as much as possible. Then he spoke of
himself: he looked forward to death with a feeling of delight, the
result of his religious convictions; he expressed a hope that if I
remained at Kaole, he might be buried at sea; and he declared himself,
in spite of my entreaties, determined to remain near the coast until he
heard of our safe transit through the lands of the dreaded Wazaramo.
This courage was indeed sublime! Such examples are not often met with
amongst men!
After this affecting farewell, I took leave of the Artémise and landed
definitively at Kaole. The Baloch driving the asses were sent off to the
first station on the road westwards, headed by my companion, on the same
evening, lest a longer sojourn in the lands of semi-civilisation should
thoroughly demoralise them. The Wanyamwezi porters, whose open faces and
laughing countenances strongly prepossessed me in their favour, had
already passed beyond their centre of attraction, the coast. I spent
that evening with Ladha Damha, inside the gloomy Gurayza. He lectured me
for the last time upon my development of what the French cartomantiste
calls “la bosse de la témérité.” Might not the Sahib be a great Sahib in
his own land--Cutch or Guzerat? Are there not other great Sahibs there,
A--Sahib and B--Sahib, for instance, who only kill pigs and ignore the
debtor and creditor side of an account in Guzeratee?
I must mention that, on the morning of the same day, I was present at a
conversation held by the Ladha, the respectable collector of the
customs, with the worthy Ramji, his clerk. I had insisted upon their
inserting in the estimate of necessaries the sum required to purchase a
boat upon the “Sea of Ujiji.”
“Will he ever reach it?” asked the respectable Ladha, conveying his
question through the medium of Cutchee, a dialect of which, with the
inconsequence of a Hindu, he assumed me to be profoundly ignorant.
“Of course not,” replied the worthy Ramji; “what is he that he should
pass through Ugogi?” (a province about half way.)
At the moment I respected their “sharm,” or shame, a leading organ in
the oriental brain, which apparently has dwindled to inconsequential
dimensions amongst the nations of the West. But when Ladha was alone, I
took the opportunity to inform him that I still intended to cross Ugogo,
and to explore the “Sea of Ujiji.” I ended by showing him that I was not
unacquainted with Cutchee, and even able to distinguish between the
debits and the credits of his voluminous sheets.
During the conversation, the loud wail of death rang wildly through the
grave-like stillness of night. “O son, hope of my life! O brother,
dearest of brothers! O husband! O husband!” these were the cries which
reached our ears. We ran to the door of the Gurayza. The only son of the
venerable Diwan Ukwere, who had been ascending the Kingani river on a
mercantile expedition, with five slaves, had been upset by a vengeful
hippopotamus, and, with two of his attendants, had lost his life.
“Insaf Karo! be honest!” said the Banyan, with whom I had had many
discussions as to whether it be lawful or unlawful to shoot the
hippopotamus, “and own that this is the first calamity which you have
brought upon the country by your presence.”
I could only reply with the common-places of polemics. Why should Ladha,
who by purchasing their spoils encouraged the destruction of herds of
elephants, object to the death of a “creek-bull”? and why should the man
who would not kill the “creek-bull” be ready to ruin a brother-man for
making a better bargain about its tusks? Ladha received these futile
objections contemptuously, as you would, right reverend father, were I
to suggest that you, primate and spiritual peer, are not exactly
following in the footsteps of certain paupers whom you fondly deem to
have been your prototypes,--your exemplars.
When Ladha left, my spirits went with him. In the solitude and the
silence of the dark Gurayza, I felt myself the plaything of misfortune.
At Cairo I had received from the East India House an order to return to
London, to appear as a witness on a trial by court-martial then pending.
The missive was, as usual, so ineptly worded, that I did not think
proper to throw overboard the Royal Geographical Society--to whom my
services had been made over--by obeying it: at the same time I well knew
what the consequences would be. Before leaving Egypt, an interview with
the Count d’Escayrac de Lauture, had afforded me an opportunity of
inspecting an expedition thoroughly well organised by His Highness Said
Pacha, of military predilections, and the contrast between an Egyptian
and an English exploration impressed me unpleasantly. Arrived at Aden, I
had enlisted the services of an old and valued friend, Dr. Steinhaeuser,
civil surgeon at that station: a sound scholar, a good naturalist, a
skilful practitioner, endowed, moreover, with even more inestimable
personal qualities, his presence would have been valuable in a land of
sickness, skirmishes, and sporting adventures, where the people are ever
impressed with the name of “medicine-man,” and in a virgin field
promising subjects of scientific interest. Yet though recommended for
the work by his Excellency the Governor of Bombay, Dr. Steinhaeuser had
been incapacitated by sickness from accompanying me: I had thus with me
a companion and not a friend, with whom I was “strangers yet.” The
Persian war had prevented the fitting-out of a surveying vessel, ordered
by the Court of Directors to act as a base of operations upon the
African coast; no disposable officer of the Indian navy was to be found
at the Presidency; and though I heard in Leadenhall Street of an
“Observatory Sergeant” competent to conduct the necessary astronomical
and meteorological observations, in the desert halls of the great
Bungalow at Colaba only a few lank Hindus met my sight. Nor was this
all. His Highness the late Sayyid Said, that estimable ally of the
English nation, had for many years repeatedly made the most
public-spirited offers to his friend Lieut.-Colonel Hamerton. He was
more than once upon the point of applying for officers selected to map
the caravan routes of Eastern Africa, and he professed himself willing
to assist them with men, money, and the weight of his widely extended
influence. This excellent prince had died forty days before the
Expedition arrived at Zanzibar. Lieut.-Colonel Hamerton, also, whose
extraordinary personal qualities enabled him to perform anything but
impossibilities amongst the Arabs, was compelled by rapidly failing
health, during my stay at Zanzibar, to lead a recluse life, which
favoured the plans of my opponents. Finally, as Indian experience taught
me, I was entering the unknown land at the fatal season, when the
shrinking of the waters after the wet monsoon would render it a hotbed
of malaria.
The hurry of departure, also, had caused a necessary neglect of certain
small precautions, which, taken in time, save much after trouble. I
should have shunned to have laid down limits of space and time for the
Expedition, whereas my friend and adviser had specified the “Sea of
Ujiji.” I intended to have drawn out every agreement in an official
form, registered at the Consulate, and specifying all particulars
concerning rations and presents for the escort, their ammunition, and
their right of sporting--that is to say, of scaring the game before it
could be shot--their reward for services, and their punishments for ill
conduct. Lieut.-Colonel Hamerton’s state of health, however, rendered
him totally unfit for the excitement of business; and, without his
assistance, a good result was not to be expected from measures so
unfamiliar, and therefore so unpalatable, to the people whom they most
concerned.
Excuse, amiable reader, this lengthy and egotistical preface to a volume
of adventure. Do not think that I would invert the moral of the
Frog-fable, by showing that what is death to you, may become fun to me.
As we are to be companions--not to say friends--for an hour or two, I
must put you in possession of certain facts, trivial in themselves, and
all unworthy of record, yet so far valuable, that they may enable us to
understand each other. _Au reste_, to quote the ballad so much admired
by the Authoress of “Our Village”:--
“The Pindar of Wakefield is my style,
And what I list I write;
Whilom a clerk of Oxenford,
But now--a banished wight.”