The second or mountain region extends from the western frontier of
K’hutu, at the head of the alluvial valley, in E. long. 37° 28′, to the
province of Ugogi, the eastern portion of the flat table-land of Ugogo,
in E. long. 36° 14′. Its diagonal breadth is 85 geographical and
rectilinear miles; and native caravans, if lightly laden, generally
traverse it in three weeks, including three or four halts. Its length
cannot be estimated. According to the guides, Usagara is a prolongation
of the mountains of Nguru, or Ngu, extending southwards, with a gap
forming the fluviatile valley of the Rwaha or Rufiji River, to the line
of highlands of which Njesa in Uhiao is supposed to be the culminating
apex: thus the feature would correspond with the Eastern Ghauts of the
Indian Peninsula. The general law of the range is north and south; in
the region now under consideration, the trend is from north by west to
south by east, forming an angle of 10° 12′ with the meridian. The
Usagara chain is of the first order in East Africa; it is indeed the
only important elevation in a direct line from the coast to western
Unyamwezi; it would hold, however, but a low grade in the general system
of the earth’s mountains. The highest point above sea-level, observed by
B. P. Therm., was 5,700 feet; there are, however, peaks which may rise
to 6,000 and even to 7,000 feet, thus rivalling the inhabited portion of
the Neilgherries. As has appeared, the chain, where crossed, was divided
into three parallel ridges by longitudinal plains.
Owing to the lowness of the basal regions at the seaward slope, there is
no general prospect of the mountains from the East, where, after
bounding the plains of K’hutu on the north, by irregular bulging lines
of rolling hill, the first gradient of insignificant height springs
suddenly from the plain. Viewed from the west, the counterslope appears
a long crescent, with the gibbus to the front, and the cusps vanishing
into distance; the summit is in the centre of the half-moon, whose
profile is somewhat mural and regular. The flanks are rounded lumpy
cones, and their shape denotes an igneous and primary origin,
intersected by plains and basins, the fractures of the rocky system.
Internally the lay, as in granitic formations generally, is irregular;
the ridges, preserving no general direction, appear to cross one another
confusedly. The slope and the counterslope are not equally inclined.
Here, as usual in chains fringing a peninsula, the seaward declivities
are the more abrupt; the landward faces are not only more elongated, but
they are also shortened in proportion as the plateau into which they
fall is higher than the mountain-plains from which they rise. To enter,
therefore, is more toilsome than to return.
From the mingling of lively colours, Usagara is delightful to the eye,
after the monotonous tracts of verdure which pall upon the sight at
Zanzibar and in the river valleys. The subsoil, displayed in the deeper
cuts and ravines, is either of granite, greenstone, schiste, or a coarse
incipient sandstone, brown or green, and outcropping from the ground
with strata steeply tilted up. In the higher elevations, the soil varies
in depth from a few inches to thirty feet; it is often streaked with
long layers of pebbles, apparently water-rolled. The colour is either an
ochreish brick-red, sometimes micaceous, and often tinted with oxide of
iron; or it is a dull grey, the debris of comminuted felspar, which,
like a mixture of all the colours, appears dazzlingly white under the
sun’s rays. The plains and depressions are of black earth, which after a
few showers becomes a grass-grown sheet of mire, and in the dry season a
deeply-cracked, stubbly savannah. Where the elevations are veiled from
base to summit with a thin forest, the crops of the greenstone and
sandstone strata appear through a brown coat of fertile humus, the decay
of vegetable matter. A fossil Bulimus was found about 3,000 feet above
sea-level, and large Achatinæ, locally called Khowa, are scattered over
the surface. On the hill-sides, especially in the lower slopes, are
strewed and scattered erratic blocks and boulders, and diminutive pieces
of white, dingy-red, rusty-pink, and yellow quartz, with large
irregularly-shaped fragments and small nodules of calcareous kunkur.
Where water lies deep below the surface, the hills and hill-plains are
clothed with a thin shrubbery of mimosas and other thorny gums.
Throughout Eastern Africa these forests are the only spots in which
travelling is enjoyable: great indeed is their contrast with the normal
features--bald glaring fields, fetid bush and grass, and monotonous
expanses of dull dead herbage, concealing swamps and water-courses,
hedged in by vegetation whose only varieties are green, greener, and
greenest. In these favoured places the traveller appears surrounded by a
thick wood which he never reaches, the trees thinning out as he
advances. On clear and sunny days the scenery is strange and imposing.
The dark-red earth is prolonged half-way up the tree-trunks by the
ascending and descending galleries of the termite: contrasting with this
peculiarly African tint, the foliage, mostly confined to the upper
branches, is of a tender and lively green, whose open fret-work admits
from above the vivid blue or the golden yellow of an unclouded sky. In
the basins where water is nearer the surface, and upon the banks of
water-courses and rivulets, the sweet and fertile earth produces a rich
vegetation, and a gigantic growth of timber, which distinguishes this
region from others further west. Usagara is peculiarly the land of
jungle-flowers, and fruits, whose characteristic is a pleasant acidity,
a provision of nature in climates where antiseptics and correctives to
bile are almost necessaries of life. They are abundant, but, being
uncultivated, the fleshy parts are undeveloped. In the plains, the air,
heavy with the delicious perfume of the jasmine (_Jasminum
Abyssinicum?_), with the strong odour of a kind of sage (_Salvia
Africana_, or _Abyssinica_?), and with the fragrant exhalations of the
mimosa-flowers, which hang like golden balls from the green clad boughs,
forms a most enjoyable contrast to the fetid exhalations of the Great
Dismal Swamps of the lowlands. The tamarind, everywhere growing wild, is
a gigantic tree. The Myombo, the Mfu’u, the Ndábi, and the Mayágeá, a
spreading tree with a large fleshy red flower, and gourds about eighteen
inches long and hanging by slender cords, are of unusual dimensions; the
calabash is converted into a hut; and the sycomore, whose favourite
habitat is the lower counterslope of Usagara, is capable of shading a
regiment. On the steep hill-sides, which here and there display signs of
cultivation and clearings of green or sunburnt grass, grow
parachute-shaped mimosas, with tall and slender trunks, and crowned by
domes of verdure, rising in tiers one above the other, like umbrellas in
a crowd.
The plains, basins, and steps, or facets of table-land found at every
elevation, are fertilised by a stripe-work of streams, runnels, and
burns, which anastomosing in a single channel, flow off into the main
drain of the country. Cultivation is found in patches isolated by thick
belts of thorny jungle, and the villages are few and rarely visited. As
usual in hilly countries, they are built upon high ridges and the slopes
of cones, for rapid drainage after rain, a purer air and fewer
mosquitoes, and, perhaps, protection from kidnappers. The country people
bring down their supplies of grain and pulse for caravans. There is some
delay and difficulty on the first day of arrival at a station, and
provisions for a party exceeding a hundred men are not to be depended
upon after the third or fourth marketing, when the people have exhausted
their stores. Fearing the thievish disposition of the Wasagara, who will
attempt even to snatch away a cloth from a sleeping man, travellers
rarely lodge near the settlements. Kraals of thorn, capacious circles
enclosing straw boothies, are found at every march, and, when burned or
destroyed by accident, they are rebuilt before the bivouac. The roads,
as usual in East Africa, are tracks trodden down by caravans and cattle,
and the water-course is ever the favourite Pass. Many of the ascents and
descents are so proclivitous that donkeys must be relieved of their
loads; and in fording the sluggish streams, where no grass forms a
causeway over the soft, viscid mire, the animals sink almost to the
knees. The steepest paths are those in the upper regions; in the lower,
though the inclines are often severe, they are generally longer, and
consequently easier. At the foot of each hill there is either a mud or a
water-course dividing it from its neighbour. These obstacles greatly
reduce the direct distance of the day’s march.
The mountains are well supplied with water, which tastes sweet after the
brackish produce of the maritime valley, and good when not rendered soft
and slimy by lying long on rushy beds. Upon the middle inclines the
burns and runnels of the upper heights form terraces of considerable
extent, and of a picturesque aspect. The wide and open sole, filled with
the whitest and cleanest sand, and retaining pools of fresh clear water,
or shallow wells, is edged by low steep ledges of a dull red clay, lined
with glorious patriarchs of the forest, and often in the bed is a
thickly wooded branch or shoal-islet, at whose upper extremity heavy
driftwood, arrested by the gnarled mimosa-clumps, and the wall of
shrubs, attests the violence of the rufous-tinted bore of waves with
which a few showers fill the broadest courses. Lower down the channels
which convey to the plains the surplus drainage of the mountains are
heaps and sheets of granite, with long reaches of rough gravel; their
stony walls, overrun with vegetation, tower high on either hand, and the
excess of inclination produces after heavy rains torrents like
avalanches, which cut their way deep into the lower plains. During the
dry season, water is drawn from pits sunk from a few inches to 20 feet
in the re-entering angles of the beds. Fed by the percolations of the
soil, they unite the purity of springs with the abundance of
rain-supplies,--a comfort fully appreciated by down-caravans after the
frequent tirikeza, or droughty afternoon-marches in the western regions.
The versant of the mountains varies. In the seaward and the central
sections streams flow eastward, and swell the Kingani and other rivers.
The southern hills discharge their waters south and south-west through
the Maroro River, and various smaller tributaries, into the “Rwaha,”
which is the proper name for the upper course of the Rufiji. In the
lateral plains between the ridges, and in the hill-girt basins, stagnant
pools, which even during the Masika, or rainy season, inundate, but will
not flow, repose upon beds of porous black earth, and engendering, by
their profuse herbage of reeds and rush-like grass, with the luxuriant
crops produced by artificial irrigation, a malarious atmosphere, cause a
degradation in the people.
The climate of Usagara is cold and damp. It has two distinct varieties,
the upper regions being salubrious, as the lower are unwholesome. In the
sub-ranges heavy exhalations are emitted by the decayed vegetation, the
nights are raw, the mornings chilly and misty, and the days are bright
and hot. In the higher levels, near the sources of the Mukondokwa River,
the climate suggests the idea of the Mahabaleshwar and the Neilgherry
Hills in Western India. Compared with Uzaramo or Unyamwezi, these
mountains are a sanatorium, and should Europeans ever settle in Eastern
Africa as merchants or missionaries, here they might reside until
acclimatised for the interior. The east wind, a local deflection of the
south-east trade, laden with the moisture of the Atlantic and the Indian
Oceans, and collecting the evaporation of the valley, impinges upon the
seaward slope, where, ascending, and relieved from atmospheric pressure,
it is condensed by a colder temperature; hence the frequent
precipitations of heavy rain, and the banks and sheets of morning-cloud
which veil the tree-clad peaks of the highest gradients. As the sun
waxes hot, the atmosphere acquires a greater capacity for carrying
water; and the results are a milky mist in the basins, and in the upper
hills a wonderful clearness broken only by the thin cirri of the higher
atmosphere. After sunset, again, the gradual cooling of the air causes
the deposit of a copious dew, which renders the nights peculiarly
pleasant to a European. The diurnal sea-breeze, felt in the slope, is
unknown in the counterslope of the mountains, where, indeed, the climate
is much inferior to that of the central and eastern heights. As in the
Sawalik Hills, and the sub-ranges of the Himalayas, the sun is burning
hot during the dry season, and in the rains there is either a storm of
thunder and lightning, wind and rain, or a stillness deep and
depressing, with occasional gusts whose distinct moaning shows the
highly electrical state of the atmosphere. The Masika, here commencing
in early January, lasts three months, when the normal easterly winds
shift to the north and the north-west. The Vuli, confined to the eastern
slopes, occurs in August, and, as on the plains, frequent showers fall
between the vernal and the autumnal rains.
The people of Usagara suffer in the lower regions from severe
ulcerations, from cutaneous disorders, and from other ailments of the
plain. Higher up they are healthier, though by no means free from
pleurisy, pneumonia, and dysentery. Fever is common; it is more acute in
the range of swamps and decomposed herbage, and is milder in the
well-ventilated cols and on the hill-sides. The type is rather a violent
bilious attack, accompanied by remittent febrile symptoms, than a
regular fever. It begins with cold and hot fits, followed by a copious
perspiration, and sometimes inducing delirium; it lasts as a quotidian
or a tertian from four to seven days; and though the attacks are slight,
they are followed by great debility, want of appetite, of sleep, and of
energy. This fever is greatly exacerbated by exposure and fatigue, and
it seldom fails to leave behind it a legacy of cerebral or visceral
disease.
The mountains of Usagara are traversed from east to west by two main
lines; the Mukondokwa on the northern and the Kiringawana on the
southern line. The former was closed until 1856 by a chronic famine, the
result of such a neighbourhood as the Wazegura and the people of Whinde
on the east, the Wahumba and the Wamasai northwards, and the Warori on
the south-west. In 1858 the mountaineers, after murdering by the vilest
treachery a young Arab trader, Salim bin Nasir, of the Bu Saidi, or the
royal family of Zanzibar, attempted to plunder a large mixed caravan of
Wanyamwezi and Wasawahili, numbering 700 or 800 guns, commanded by a
stout fellow, Abdullah bin Nasib, called by the Africans “Kisesa,” who
carried off the cattle, burned the villages, and laid waste the whole of
the Rubeho or western chain.
The clans now tenanting these East African ghauts are the
Wasagara,--with their chief sub-tribe the Wakwivi,--and the Wahehe; the
latter a small body inhabiting the south-western corner, and extending
into the plains below.
The limits of the Wasagara have already been laid down by the names of
the plundering tribes that surround them. These mountaineers, though a
noisy and riotous race, are not overblessed with courage: they will lurk
in the jungle with bows and arrows to surprise a stray porter; but they
seem ever to be awaiting an attack--the best receipt for inviting it. In
the higher slopes they are fine, tall and sturdy men; in the low lands
they appear as degraded as the Wak’hutu. They are a more bearded race
than any other upon this line of East Africa, and, probably from
extensive intercourse with the Wamrima, most of them understand the
language of the coast. The women are remarkable for a splendid
development of limb, whilst the bosom is lax and pendent.
The Wasagara display great varieties of complexion, some being almost
black, whilst the others are chocolate-coloured. This difference cannot
be accounted for by the mere effects of climate--level and temperature.
Some shave the head; others wear the Arab’s shushah, a kind of skull-cap
growth, extending more or less from the poll. Amongst them is seen, for
the first time on this line, the classical coiffure of ancient Egypt.
The hair, allowed to attain its fullest length, is twisted into a
multitude of the thinnest ringlets, each composed of two thin lengths
wound together; the wiry stiffness of the curls keeps them distinct and
in position. Behind, a curtain of pigtails hangs down to the nape; in
front the hair is either combed off the forehead, or it is brought over
the brow and trimmed short. No head-dress has a wilder nor a more
characteristically African appearance than this, especially when,
smeared with a pomatum of micaceous ochre, and decorated with beads,
brass balls, and similar ornaments, it waves and rattles with every
motion of the head. Young men and warriors adorn their locks with the
feathers of vultures, ostriches, and a variety of bright-plumed jays,
and some tribes twist each ringlet with a string of reddish fibre. It is
seldom combed out, the operation requiring for a head of thick hair the
hard work of a whole day; it is not, therefore, surprising that the
pediculus swarms through the land. None but the chiefs wear caps. Both
sexes distend the ear-lobe; a hole is bored with a needle or a thorn, it
is enlarged by inserting bits of cane, wood, or quills, increasing the
latter to the number of twenty, and it is kept open by a disk of brass,
ivory, wood, or gum, a roll of leaf or a betel-nut; thus deformed it
serves for a variety of purposes apparently foreign to the member; it
often carries a cane snuff-box, sometimes a goat’s-horn pierced for a
fife, and other small valuables. When empty, especially in old age, it
depends in a deformed loop to the shoulders. The peculiar mark of the
tribe is a number of confused little cuts between the ears and the
eyebrows. Some men, especially in the eastern parts of the mountains,
chip the teeth to points.
The dress of the Wasagara is a shukkah or loin-cloth, 6 feet long,
passed round the waist in a single fold,--otherwise walking would be
difficult--drawn tight behind, and with the fore extremities gathered
up, and tucked in over the stomach, where it is sometimes supported by a
girdle of cord, leather, or brass wire: it is, in fact, the Arab’s
“uzár.” On journeys it is purposely made short and scanty for
convenience of running. The material is sometimes indigo-dyed, at other
times unbleached cotton, which the Wasagara stain a dull yellow. Cloth,
however, is the clothing of the wealthy. The poor content themselves
with the calabash-“campestre” or kilt, and with the softened skins of
sheep and goats. It is curious that in East Africa, where these articles
have from time immemorial been the national dress, and where amongst
some tribes hides form the house, that the people have neither invented
nor borrowed the principles of rude tanning, even with mimosa-bark, an
art so well known to most tribes of barbarians. Immediately after
flaying, the stretched skin is pegged, to prevent shrinking, inside
upwards, in the sun, and it is not removed till thoroughly cleansed and
dried. The many little holes in the margin give it the semblance of
ornamentation, and sometimes the hair is scraped off, leaving a fringe
two or three inches broad around the edge: the legs and tail of the
animal are favourite appendages with “dressy gentlemen.” These skins are
afterwards softened by trampling, and they are vigorously pounded with
clubs: after a few days’ wear, dirt and grease have almost done the duty
of tanning. The garb is tied over either shoulder by a bit of cord or
simply by knotting the corners; it therefore leaves one side of the body
bare, and, being loose and ungirt, it is at the mercy of every wind. On
journeys it is doffed during rain, and placed between the burden and the
shoulder, so that, arrived at the encamping ground, the delicate
traveller may have a “dry shirt.”
Women of the wealthier classes wear a tobe, or double-length shukkah,
tightly drawn under the arms, so as to depress whilst it veils the
bosom, and tucked in at either side. Dark stuffs, indigo-dyed and Arab
checks, are preferred to plain white for the usual reasons. The dress of
the general is a short but decorous jupe of greasy skin, and a similar
covering for the bosom, open behind, and extending in front from the
neck to the middle of the body: the child is carried in another skin
upon the back. The poorest classes of both sexes are indifferently
attired in the narrow kilt of bark-fibre, usually made in the maritime
countries from the ukhindu or brab tree; in the interior from the
calabash. The children wear an apron of thin twine, like the Nubian
thong-garments. Where beads abound, the shagele, a small square napkin
of these ornaments strung upon thread, is fastened round the waist by a
string or a line of beads. There are many fanciful modifications of it:
some children wear a screen of tin plates, each the size of a man’s
finger: most of the very juniors, however, are simply attired in a cord,
with or without beads, round the waist.
The ornaments of the Wasagara are the normal beads and wire, and their
weight is the test of wealth and respectability. A fillet of blue and
white beads is bound round the head, and beads,--more beads,--appear
upon the neck, the arms, and the ankles. The kitindi, or coil of thick
brass wire, extends from the elbow to the wrist; others wear little
chains or thick bangles of copper, brass, or zinc, and those who can
afford it twist a few circles of brass wire under the knee. The arms of
the men are bows and arrows, the latter unpoisoned, but armed with
cruelly-barbed heads, and spines like fish-bones, cut out in the long
iron shaft which projects from the wood. Their spears and assegais are
made from the old hoes which are brought down by the Wanyamwezi
caravans; the ferule is thin, and it is attached to the shaft by a
cylinder of leather from a cow’s tail, drawn over the iron, and allowed
to shrink at its junction with the wood: some assegais have a central
swell in the shaft, probably to admit of their being used in striking
like the rungu or knobstick. Men seldom leave the house without a
billhook of peculiar shape--a narrow sharp blade, ending in a right
angle, and fixed in a wooden handle, with a projection rising above the
blade. The shield is rarely found on this line of East Africa. In
Usagara it is from three to four feet in length by one to two feet in
breadth, composed of two parallel belts of hardened skin. The material
is pegged out to stretch and dry, carefully cleaned, sometimes doubled,
sewn together with a thin thong longitudinally, and stained black down
one side, and red down the other. A stout lath is fastened lengthwise as
a stiffener to the shield, and a central bulge is made in the hide,
enabling the hand to grasp the wood. The favourite materials are the
spoils of the elephant, the rhinoceros, and the giraffe; the common
shields are of bull’s-hide, and the hair is generally left upon the
outside as an ornament, with attachments of zebra and cows’ tails. It is
a flimsy article, little better than a “wisp of fern or a herring-net”
against an English “clothyard:” it suffices, however, for defence
against the puny cane-arrows of the African archer.
As a rule, each of these villages has its headman, who owns, however, an
imperfect allegiance to the Mutwa or district chief, whom the Arabs call
“sultan.” The Mgosi is his wazir, or favourite councillor, and the
elders or headmen of settlements collectively are Wabáhá. Their
principal distinction is the right to wear a fez, or a Surat cap, and
the kizbáo, a sleeveless waistcoat. They derive a certain amount of
revenue by trafficking in slaves: consequently many of the Wasagara find
their way into the market of Zanzibar. Moreover, the game-laws as
regards elephants are here strictly in favour of the Sultan. An animal
found dead in his district, though wounded in another, becomes his
property on condition of his satisfying his officials with small
presents of cloth and beads: the flesh is feasted upon by the tribe, and
the ivory is sold to travelling traders.
The Wahehe, situated between the Wasagara and Wagogo, partake a little
of the appearance of both. They are a plain race, but stout and well
grown. Though to appearance hearty and good-humoured, they are
determined pilferers: they have more than once attacked caravans, and
only the Warori have prevented them from cutting off the road to Ugogo.
During the return of the Expedition in 1858 they took occasion to drive
off unseen a flock of goats; and at night no man, unless encamped in a
strong kraal, was safe from their attempts to snatch his goods. On one
occasion, being caught in flagrant delict, they were compelled to
restore their plunder, with an equivalent as an indemnity. They are on
bad terms with all their neighbours, and they unite under their chief
Sultan Bumbumu.
The Wahehe enlarge their ears like the Wagogo, they chip the two upper
incisors, and they burn beauty-spots in their forearms. Some men extract
three or four of the lower incisors: whenever an individual without
these teeth is seen in Ugogo he is at once known as a Mhehe. For
distinctive mark they make two cicatrised incisions on both cheeks from
the zygomata to the angles of the mouth. They dress like the Wagogo, but
they have less cloth than skins. The married women usually wear a jupe,
in shape recalling the old swallow-tailed coat of Europe, with kitindi,
or coil armlets of brass or iron wire on both forearms and above the
elbows. Unmarried girls amongst the Wahehe are known by their peculiar
attire, a long strip of cloth, like the Indian “languti or T-bandage,”
but descending to the knees, and attached to waistbelts of large white
or yellow porcelain or blue glass beads. Over this is tied a kilt of
calabash fibre, a few inches deep. The men wear thick girdles of brass
wire, neatly wound round a small cord. Besides the arms described
amongst the Wasagara, the Wahehe carry “sime,” or double-edged knives,
from one to two feet long, broadening out from the haft, and rounded off
to a blunt point at the end. The handle is cut into raised rings for
security of grip, and, when in sheath, half the blade appears outside
its rude leathern scabbard. The Tembe, or villages of the Wahehe, are
small, ragged, and low, probably to facilitate escape from attack. They
do business in slaves, and have large flocks and herds, which are,
however, often thinned by the Warori, whom the Wahehe dare not resist in
the field.
[Illustration: Ugogo.]