FROM MOMBASAH TO THE PANGANI RIVER.
The sweeping sword of Time
Has sung its death-dirge o’er the ruined fanes.
QUEEN MAB.
Not a head of game, not a hippopotamus, was to be found near Mombasah.
We finished our geographical inquiries; shook hands with divers
acquaintances; re-shipped, after sundry little difficulties, on board
the Riami; and on the 24th of January we left the turbulent island with
gladdened hearts. The accidents of voyage now turned in our favour:
there was a bright fresh breeze and a counter-current running southward
thirty or thirty-five miles a day. After 6 hours of drowsy morning
sailing, Ra’as Tewi, a picturesque headland, hove in sight, and two
hours more brought the Riami to anchor at Sandy Point, in Gasi (جاسى)
Bay. It lies half-way \[Arabic] between Mombasah and Wasin Island, and
the position is correctly laid down in the ‘Mission Map.’[21] It is a
mere roadstead, without other protection against the long sweep and
swell of the Indian Ocean than a few scattered ‘washes,’ and a coralline
islet. The settlement lies at some distance from the shore, deep-bosomed
in trees, behind a tall screen of verdant mangrove; only the nodding
cocoa, sure indicator of man’s presence in East Africa, towering high
over the plebeian underwood, betrays its position to the mariner. The
large village of wattle and dab huts is inhabited, like Mtuapa and
Takaungu, by remnants of the proud Mazrui irreconcileables, still
self-exiled from Mombasah. They live under the Shaykh Abdullah bin
Khamis, and a sister of Shaykh Mubarak of Mombasah, who is said to
display peculiar energy. They have given refuge to fugitive slaves from
Marka, and behind the coast-line they have founded a new settlement,
Mwasagnombe. It is not improbable that, in common with their brethren
established in other villages, they look forward to recovering Mombasah,
their old appanage.
Gasi is surrounded by plantations, and the Arabs, unmolested by the
Wadigo savages, to whom the fertile land belongs, live in comparative
comfort. Our crew armed themselves to accompany my companion, who,
despite the bad name of the people, was civilly received on shore, with
sundry refreshments of cocoa-nut milk and cake of rasped pulp and
rice-flour. The footprints of a small lion appeared upon the sands, but
we were not young enough to undertake the fruitless toil of tracking it.
This was the breeding season, as the frequent birds’-nests proved.
Ensued a cool, breezy night on board the Riami, the thermometer showing
75° (F.). Our gallant captain, the melancholist, sat up till dawn,
chatting with Said bin Salim, who trembled at the sound of scattered
washes, and at the wind moaning over the coral bank and through the
barren ‘forests of the sea.’
About sunrise we again made sail, and, guided by that excellent
landmark, the Peaks of Wasin, whose height is in charts 2500 feet, we
entered, after three hours, the narrow channel, with never less than 5
fathoms of water, which, running nearly due east and west, separates
Wasin Island from the continent. The north of this coralline bank, an
‘insula opaca,’ about 2¼ miles long by 1 in breadth, is defended by
sundry outlying ledges and diminutive cliffs, where the gulls and terns
take refuge, and upon which the combing sea breaks its force. The low
southern shore is rich in the gifts of floatsom and jetsom; here the
tide, flowing amongst the mangrove fringes and under shady crags, forms
little bays, by no means unpicturesque. To windward, or south, lies the
Wasin Bank, with three or four plateaux of tree-tufted rock emerging a
few feet above sea-level.
The Island, which does a little cultivation, belongs to Zanzibar, and
the only settlement, about the centre of its length, is on the northern
shore, fronting Wanga Bandar on the Continent. Wasin contains three
Mosques, long flat-roofed rooms of coral rag and lime ranged obliquely
to face Meccah, and scattered amongst little huts and large houses of
‘bordi’ or mangrove timber: the latter are tied with coir rope and
plastered over with clay, which in rare cases is whitewashed. The
sloping thatch-roof already approaches in size and in sharpness of pitch
the disproportions of the Madagascar cottage. Huge calabashes extend
their fleshy arms over the hovels, affording the favourite luxury of a
cool lounge, and giving from afar a something of pleasant village aspect
to the squalid settlement. Water must be brought from the mainland; the
people own it to be brackish, but declare that it is not unwholesome.
The climate is infamous for breeding fever and helcoma, the air being
poisoned by cowries festering under a tropical sun, and by two large
graveyards—here also, as at Zanzibar, the abodes of the dead are built
amongst the habitations of the living. The population is a bigoted and
low-minded race, Hassádin (envious fellows) of evil eye, say the
Zanzibarians; a mixture of lymphatic Arabs, hideous Wasawahili, ignoble
half-castes, and thievish slaves. The Sayyid maintains no garrison here;
the Banyans have been forbidden to deal in cowries, and the native
merchants have all the profits such as they are.
I could hear nothing of Mr Cooley’s ‘tribe named Masimba, on the coast
at Wassína (Wasin Island), near Mombasa,’ a term which he translates
‘lions,’ and identifies with the Zimba invaders of Do Couto. There is,
however, a district of that name between Wasin and Gasi; and it may be
connected with the range crossed by M. Rebmann, in 1847, and usually
written Shimba. In the interior the word Masimba is used when addressing
man or woman, and the root appears to be identical with that of the
Vazimba or aborigines of Ankova. The people of Wasin send caravans of
100 men to the interior, viâ Wanga Bandar. They set out about the end of
February, make some 20 marches, and return with ivory and slaves after
about four months.
Landing, we found the shore crowded with unarmed spectators, who did not
even return our salams: we resolved in future to reserve such greetings
for those who deserve them. After sitting half an hour in a mat-shed,
redolent with drying cowries and dignified with the name of Furzeh, or
Custom House, presided over by a young Bohrah from Cutch, we were
civilly accosted by an old man, whose round head showed him to be a
Hindostani. Abd el Karim led us to his house, seated us in chairs upon
the terrace, and mixed for us a cooling sherbet in a kind of one-handled
blue and white vase, not usually, in Europe at least, devoted to such
purpose. The Riami discharging cargo, we walked into the jungle,
followed by a ragged tail of men and boys, to inspect some old
Portuguese wells: as we traversed the village all the women fled—a proof
that El Islam here flourishes. This part of the island is thinly veiled
with a red argillaceous soil which produces a thick and matted growth of
thorny plants, creepers, and parasites: eastward, where the mould is
deeper, there is richer vegetation, and a few stunted cocoas have taken
root. After fighting through the jungle, we came upon two pits sunk in
the soft rock: Said bin Salim was bitterly derided whilst he sounded the
depth, 40 feet; and by way of revenge, I dropped a hint about buried
gold, which has doubtless been the cause of aching arms and hearts to
the churls of Wasin. There is no game on the Island or on the main: in
the evening, after a warm bath amongst the mangroves, we left the dirty
hole without a shade of regret.
The coast is here concealed by the usual thickset hedge of verdure,
above which nod the tufts of straggling palms: its background is the
rocky purple wall of Bondei—Capt. Owen’s ‘Sheemba Range of Hills, about
1500 feet high’—here and there broken by tall blue cones. After 1 h. 30
min. we sighted Wanga Bandar, where the land was smoking; this place has
rarely the honour of appearing in maps. The environs belong to the
Wadigo, amongst whom Said bin Salim lost a slave-girl: she had gone on
leave of absence to her tribe, and though she never returned, he
received from her an annual remittance of a dollar. These people, who
are divided into half-a-dozen clans, occupy a fine high country which
extends westward to Usumbara: they dwell in large villages, fenced to
keep out the Wamasai, and they are agriculturists, fond of Jete, or
public markets, at which they dispose of their grain to the
coast-traders. Those whom we saw were poor-looking men: their bows were
well turned and bent, with brass knobs and strings of cowgut; the
notched and neatly feathered arrows had triangular iron piles. The
women, who veiled the bosom, were remarkably plain, and apparently had
never seen a European. These Wadigo with their southern neighbours, the
Wasegeju, are porters of the inland traffic. Caravans, if they may so be
called, numbering sometimes a hundred men, slaves included, set out at
the beginning of the rains in March or April, from Wanga and other
little ‘Bandars’ on the coast. If the capital be $1000, they distribute
it into $400 of beads, and brass and iron wires (Nos. 7 and 8), with
$400 of American domestics and cotton-stuff’s of sorts: the remainder
serves to pay 40 porters, who each receive $10 per trip, half before
starting and the rest upon return. After twenty days’ march, these
trading parties arrive at Umasai and the adjacent countries; they remain
there bartering for three or four months, and then march back laden with
ivory and driving a few slaves purchased en route.
Our Nakhoda again showed symptoms of ‘dodging:’ he had been allowed to
ship cargo from Mombasah to Wasin, and thereupon he founded a claim or
rather a right to carry goods from Wasin to Tanga. Unable to disabuse
his mind by mild proceedings, I threatened to cut the cable, and thus
once more, the will of Japhet prevailing over that of Shem, we succeeded
about 1 P.M., not without aid from an Omani craft, in hauling up our
ground-tackle. The old Riami, groaning in every rib, flirted with some
reefs, and floated into the open sea, whose combing waves were foaming
under a stiff N. Easter. As we sped merrily along Said bin Salim busied
himself in calculating the time it would take to round the several
promontories. But when the water smoothened under the lee of Pemba
Island he became bold enough to quote these martial lines:—
‘I have backed the steed since my eyes saw light,
And have fronted Death till he feared my sight;
And the riven helm and the piercèd mail
Were my youthtide’s dream, are my manhood’s delight.’
After two hours of brisk sailing, we lay abreast of a headland called by
our crew Kwala (Chala Point of the Hydrographic Map), bounding the deep
inlet and outlying islets of Jongolia-ni or Chongolia-ni. Approaching
the gape of Tanga Bay, he shortened sail, or we might have made it at 4
P.M.: the entrance, however, is intricate; we had no pilot, and the crew
preferred hobbling in under a bit of artemon or foresail, which they
took a good hour to hoist. At sunset, having threaded the ‘Bab’ or
narrow rock-bound passage which separates Ra’as Rashid, the northern
mainland-spit, a precipitous bluff some 20 feet high, from the head of
Tanga Islet, we glided into the smooth bay, and anchored in three
fathoms, opposite and about half a mile from the town, which is known by
the cocoas and calabashes crowning the ridge.
Tanga Bay is placed by Captain Owen in S. lat. 4° 35′, or five miles N.
of Wasin Island, and thus the positions of the whole Coast are thrown
out.[22] It is in S. lat. 5°; South of Wasin, and between that place and
the mouth of the Panga-ni river. This extraordinary error can have been
made only by a confusion of the survey-sheets, and it appears the more
singular in a work of such correctness. The inlet, called probably from
its shape, Tanga, the sail, or kilt, is five miles deep by four broad,
and the entrance is partially barred by a coralline bank, the site of
the ancient Arab settlement. Tanga Islet, a lump of green, still
contains a scatter of huts, and a small square stone Gurayza (fort),
whose single gun lies dismounted: it is well wooded, but the water
obtained by digging pits in the sand is scarcely potable. As a
breakwater it is imperfect during the N. East trades: when a high sea
rolls up ships must anchor under the mainland, and when the S. West
monsoon blows home it is almost impossible to leave the harbour without
accident. The bay, embanked with abundant verdure and surrounded by
little settlements, receives the contents of two fresh-water streamlets:
westward (311°) is the Mtofu, and N. of it (355°) the Mto Mvo-ni[23] or
Kiboko-ni—Hippopotamus river. The latter at several miles distant from
its mouth must be crossed in a ferry; it affords sweet water, but the
people of Tanga prefer scratching into their sand to the trouble of
fetching the pure element. The ‘Kiboko’ is found in small numbers at the
embouchures of these islands, and often within a few yards of where the
boys bathed. I defer an account of our sport till we meet that unamiable
pachyderm upon the Panga-ni river.
Like all the towns of the ‘Mrima’ proper, which here, I have said,
begins, Tanga is a patch of thatched pent-roofed huts, built upon a bank
overlooking the sea in a straggling grove of cocoa and calabash. The
population is laid down at 4000 to 5000 souls, including 20 Banyans and
15 Baloch, with the customary consumptive Jemadar. The citizens are
chiefly occupied with commerce, and they send twice a year in May to
June and in October to November, after the Great and Little Rains,
trading parties to Chaga and Umasai. At such times they find on the way
an abundance of water: the land, however, supplies no food. From Tanga
to Mhina-ni (the place of Mhina, Henna, or the P.N. of man, in Herr
Petermann’s Map ‘Mikihani,’ and in Mr Wakefield Mihináni), on the Upper
Panga-ni river, passing between Mbaramo and Pare, are 13 marches: here
the road divides, one branch leading northward to Chaga, the other
westward across the river to the Wamasai’s country. The total would be
15 stages, at least 20 days for men carrying[24] merchandise. These
caravans are seldom short of 400 to 500 men, Arabs and Wasawahili,
Pagazi or free porters who carry 50 lbs. each, and slaves. The imports
are chiefly cotton-stuffs, iron wires (Senyenge), brass wires (Másángo),
and beads, of which some 400 varieties are current in these countries.
The usual return consists chiefly of ivory, per annum about 70,000 lbs.,
we were told—a quantity hardly credible. I heard of some gold dust from
Umasai being sent as a specimen to Sayyid Mayed: they bring also a few
slaves, some small mangey camels, and half-wild asses.[25] The citizens
trade with the coast-savages, and manufacture, from imported iron,
billhooks and hard wares for the Wasegeju. This tribe, once powerful,
now uninfluential, preserves a tradition that when expelled with the
Wasawahili from Shungaya by the Gallas, it migrated to the River Ozi or
Dana (Zana), to the Bay of Kilifi, and finally to Wanga and Tanga. The
dialect, they say, is similar to that of the Pokomo of the Dana, hence
probably Mr Guillain (i. 402) declares them to have been indigens of the
coast about Melinde. Still a violent, warlike, and furious brood, as
described by Do Couto (Decad. xi. chap. xxi.), they hunt the Bondei
Hills for slaves, and of late years, having sundry blood-feuds with
their neighbours the Wadigo, they have sought the protection of King
Kimwere and of the Wazegura race south of the Panga-ni river. Tanga has
for some time since been spared the mortification of the Wamasai, who in
this vicinity have driven and harried many a herd. I here saw two of
their women, veritable human Cynocephali, flat-headed, with receding
brows à la Robespierre, eyes close together, long low noses with open
nostrils, projecting muzzles, and ears in strips. The land is now,
comparatively speaking, thickly inhabited, and dotted with flourishing
villages, Mvo-ni, Ambo-ni, Janja-ni, and others.
The only modern tribe which figures in the history of the coast is the
Wasegeju. We first read of them in 1589, when the Zimba or Wazimba
Kafirs, who had devastated the dependencies of Tete and Rios de Sena, on
the Zambeze, swarmed northwards, massacring, and, it is said, devouring,
all who opposed them between Kilwa and Mombasah. After destroying Kilwa,
where they are reported to have killed and eaten 3000 Moors, men and
women, they appeared upon the seaboard opposite Mombasah, whilst Thomé
de Souza Coutinho was attacking the rebellious city in which the Corsair
Ali Bey had taken refuge. The savages sided with the Portuguese, crossed
the ford, and fell upon the townspeople with assegai and arrow. The
citizens fled, preferring to face the sword and the musket of the
Christian invader. After this the Zimbas marched upon Melinde, and
threatened it with the fate of Kilwa and Mombasah. But the firmness of
the Sultan and the courage of Mattheus Mendes de Vasconcellos were equal
to the occasion: they reinforced themselves with a host of 3000
Wasegeju, and they succeeded in annihilating the cannibals. In 1592 the
Wasegeju, again summoned to the assistance of Melinde, slew its enemy,
the Shaykh of Kilifi. The last Shirazi Sultan of Mombasah, determining
to avenge the death of his kinsmen, assembled 5000 wild men from the
neighbouring hills to attack Melinde. The Wasegeju, however, not only
defeated and slew him, with three of his sons, and many of the chief
Moslems who accompanied him; they also captured Mombasah, and sending a
young son of the defunct Sultan to Melinde, they gave up to it a city,
which for a whole century had been its deadly enemy. The name
‘Mosseguaies, very barbarous,’ appears in the map of John Senex (1712).
The tribe is mentioned by Dr Krapf (‘Wasegedshu’ Church Missionary
Intelligencer of 1849, p. 86), and by Mr Wakefield (Wasegeju, p. 212).
We landed on the morning of Jan. 27, and were received with peculiar
cordiality. In the absence of the Arab Governor, Mohammed bin Ali, we
were met upon the seashore by Khalfan bin Abdillah, Hammed bin Abdillah,
and the headman Kibaya Mchanga, with sundry Diwans and Wasawihili
notables; by the Jemadar, with his Baloch, and by Miyan Sahib, a daft
old Hindu, who here collects the customs. They conducted us up the bank
to the hut formerly tenanted by M. Erhardt, seated us on chairs facing
couches; brought coffee, fruit, and milk, with a goat, by way of
welcome, and succeeded in winning our hearts. That day was spent in
inquiries about the commerce and geography of the interior, and in
listening to wild tales concerning the Æthiopic Olympus, the Sierra
Nevada of Eastern Africa, which Jupiter Cooley decreed to be eternally
snowless. Most of the people here pronounced the word Kilima-ngao ‘Mont
bouclier,’ Ngáo being the umbo or shield-boss: from others I heard
Kilima-njaro, which in Kikwafi, according to the missionaries, means
‘Mountain of Greatness.’[26] Here Sheddad bin ’Ad built the City of
Brass, and encrusted the hill-top with a silver dome, that shines with
various and surprising colours. Here the Jánn, beings made of fire, as
humans are of earth and mermen of water, hold their court, and baffle
the attempts of man’s adventurous feet. The mountain recedes as the
traveller advances, and the higher he ascends the loftier rises the
summit. At last blood bursts from the nostrils, the fingers bend
backwards (with cramp?), and the hardiest is fain to stop. Amongst this
Herodotian tissue of fact and fable[27] ran one golden thread of
truth,—all testified to the intense cold.
Westward of the great mountain are placed in the ‘Mombas Mission Map’
the Wabilikimo (Wambelikimo), ‘literally the two measuring, i. e. twice
the measure from the middle fingertip to the elbow. This is of course an
exaggeration, but they are no doubt a diminutive race of men. They come
to Jagga to trade, where they are called Wakoningo.’ The name, however,
‘Kimo,’ or Vazimba, the first occupants of Ankova (Madagascar), is
mentioned even by Rochon: he makes them a people of pigmies, in stature
averaging three feet six inches, of a lighter colour than the negro,
long-armed, and with short woolly hair. South of Kafa, again, the
Doko[28] race is said to be only four feet in stature. Formerly we
explained these traditional Blemmyes, or pigmies, by supposing them to
be apes that have been submitted to savage exaggeration. But the state
of the question has been completely changed since the Second Expedition
of my friend Paul du Chaillu, who, despite the late Mr John Craufurd,
discovered, the ‘Obongo,’ a race not only dwarfish, but living close to
a tribe of unusually tall and powerful negroes: curious to say, they
occupy about the same parallel of latitude as do the traditional
Wabilikimo.
In the evening we were honoured with a Ngoma Khu, or full orchestra, for
which a dollar was but a paltry bakhshish, were noise worth coin. The
spectators appeared by no means a comely race, but they were healthier
and in far better condition than the churls of Wasin. I saw, however,
amongst them many cases of leprous white spots on the palms and soles.
We took leave at night, provided by the Díwáns with a bullock and
half-a-dozen goats, with fruit, and with milk. These headmen, who prefer
to be entitled Sultan, are in the proportion of half-a-dozen per
village, each one omnipotent within his own walls. In their presence the
many-headed may not sit on chairs, carpets, or fine mats; use umbrellas,
wear turbans, nor walk in the pattens called Kabkab: moreover, on solemn
occasions such as this none but the Diwan may pace and whirl through the
Pyrrhic dance. Said bin Salim described them as a kind of folk that want
to eat—in fact, des escrocs: they accompanied us, however, gratis, on
our various excursions, and when we went out shooting, our difficulty
was to shirk an escort.
Knowing that Arab and Persian colonies had been planted at an early
epoch in this part of the Sawahil, I accepted with pleasure a guide to
one of the ancient cities. Setting out at 8 A.M. with a small body of
spearmen, I walked four or five miles S. West of Tanga on the Mtangata
road over a country dry as Arabian sand, and strewed with the bodies of
huge millepedes. The hard red and yellow clays produced in plenty holcus
and sesamum, manioc and papaws; mangoes and pine-apples were rare, but
the Jamli, or Indian damson (in Arabic Zám and in Kisawahili
Mzambaráni), the egg-plant, and the toddy-tree grew wild. The baobabs
were in new leaf, the fields were burned in readiness for rain, and the
peasants dawdled about, patting the clods with bits of wood. At last we
traversed a Khor, or lagoon drained by the receding tide, and insulating
the ruins: then, after a walk of five miles over crab-mounds, we sighted
our destination. From afar it resembled an ancient castle. Entering by a
gap in the enceinte, I found a parallelogram some 200 yards long, of
solid coralline or lime, in places rent by the roots of sturdy trees,
well bastioned and loop-holed for bows and muskets. The site is raised
considerably above the mean level of the country, attesting its
antiquity: it is concealed from the seaside by a screen of trees and by
the winding creek, that leaves the canoes high during the ebb-tide; full
water makes it an island. In the centre, also split by huge coiling
creepers, and in the last stage of dilapidation, are the remains of a
Mosque showing signs of a rude art. I was led with some pretension to a
writing, perpendicularly scratched upon a stuccoed column: it proved to
be the name of a lettered Msawahili—Kimángá wá Muamádi (Mohammed) Adi
(Walad) Makame—and the character was more like Kufic than anything that
I had ever seen at Harar. The ruins of houses are scattered over the
enceinte, and a masonry revetted and chumam’d well, sunk 8 feet deep in
the coralline, yields a sufficiency of water with an earthy taste. There
are some others of similar style, but bone-dry, upon the creek-bank—they
had probably been built from above, as the Arabs and Indians still do,
and allowed to settle. The modern village of cajan-thatched huts,
palisaded with trees, and the hovels of a few Wasegejgu savages, who use
the ruins as pens for their goats, and stunted high-humped cows, attest
present degradation. There were a few of the small Umasai asses, which
are said to be useless for travelling. Amongst the children I remarked
an Albino with flaxen hair and reddish-white skin, as if affected by
leprosy. None of the tenants preserved any tradition about the place,
which they call ‘Changa Ndumi.’ The Arabs, however, who accompanied me,
declared that they belonged to the ‘old ancient’ Y’urabi, the dynasty
preceding the present rulers of Oman; and if so, they must have been
built before the middle of the last century (A.D. 1741). We returned in
time to witness a funeral. The mourners were women with blackened faces,
and habited in various coloured clothes, unpleasantly outlining angles
and segments of circles. They ‘keened’ all day, and the drum paraded its
monotonous sounds till the dawn streaked with pale light the shoulders
of the far Bondei hills. I visited the little heap of cajan huts called
Jánjá-ni, and lying half a mile to the north-east: here-were four civil
men, Bohrahs from Hindostan, who lived by the cowrie trade.
On every fifth day the Tanga people hold at the neighbouring village of
Ambo-ni a market with the savages of the interior. Having assumed an
Arab dress—a turban of portentous circumference, and a long
henna-stained shirt—and accompanied by Said bin Salim with his
Excalibur; by the consumptive Jemadar who sat down to rest every ten
minutes, and by Khalfan bin Abdillah, an old Arab who had constituted
himself cicerone, we attended the ‘Golio’ on January 29. Walking along
the coast, we passed through a village rich in cocoas and in iron
forges, which were hard at work: a school of young hopefuls was busily
employed in loud reading and in swaying the body. The country was pretty
and fertile, rich in manioc and cocoas, in plantains, and the Ricinus
shrub; there were a few mangoes—the people asked for the stones to
plant—and many Dom or Theban palms (Crucifera Thebaica), whose
bifurcations and re-bifurcations are so remarkable, and whose crimson
fruit is eaten as in West Africa. Formerly the land was harried by the
beef-eating Wamasai, hence the scarcity of cattle. After two miles we
crossed some tidal creeks, corded over with creepers, and tree roots
growing from black mire; we waded a sandy inlet, and we forded the small
sweet surface drain Mtofu, which had water up to the waist. Another mile
brought us to the River Mvo-ni (of Behemoth), here called the Zigi—two
names in three miles, a truly African fashion! Salted by the tide, it
flows under banks forty to fifty feet high, crowned with calabash and
other jungle trees. Women were being ferried over: in ecstasies of
terror they buried their faces between their knees till the moment of
danger had passed away. These savages are by no means a maritime race,
they have no boats, they rarely fish, and being unable to swim, they are
stopped by the narrowest stream unless they can bridge it by felling a
tree in the right direction, as it is said the beavers do.
Having crossed the river, we traversed plantations of cocoas and
plantains, and ascending a steep hill, we found, after five miles of
walking, the market ‘warm,’ as Easterns say, upon the seaward slope. All
Tanga was there. The wild people, Wasumbara and Washenzi,[29] Wadigo and
Wasegeju, were clothed in greasy hides and cotton wrappers of inveterate
grime. Every man carried his bow and arrow, his knobstick (Rungo), his
club, his sword, and his shield, but few owned muskets. Some had come
from afar, as was shown by their low wooden stools and small churning
staves. The women were more numerous, and harder worked; the girls were
bare-breasted, and every matron had her babe tied in a bundle to the
back, its round black head nodding with every movement of the maternal
person. Yet it never cries—that model baby! They carried, besides masses
of beads strung round the neck, zinc and brass armlets all down the
arms, and huge collars and anklets of metal, heavy loads of valuable
stuff; and others sat opposite their belongings, chaffering and
gesticulating upon knotty questions of fragmentary farthings. These
ill-used and hard-favoured beings, with patterns burnt into their skins,
paid toll for ingress at a place where cords were stretched across the
path, a primitive style of raising octroi. The Bedawin exchanged their
lean sheep and goats, cocoas and bananas, grain and ghee, for white and
blue cottons, beads, and rude iron ware—knives, bills, and hatchets,
made on the coast of metal brought from Zanzibar. The luxuries were
dried fish, salt, Tembo or cocoa-toddy, spices, needles and thread,
fish-hooks, and bluestone used in their rude medicine. Formerly a large
quantity of ivory found its way to the ‘Golio’; now it is purchased in
the interior by trading parties. The groups, gathered under the several
trees, were noisy, but civil to us. Often, however, a lively scene,
worthy of Donnybrook in its palmiest days, takes place, knobstick and
dagger being used by the black factions as freely as fists and
shillelaghs in more civilized lands. At noon we returned over the sands
which were strewed with sea-slugs, and in places chœtodons lay dead in
the sun. The heat of the ground made my bare-footed companions run from
time to time for the shade, like the dogs in Tibet.
Sundry excursions delayed us six days at Tanga. We failed to bag any
hippopotamus, the animals being here very timid. A herd of six,
commanded by a large black old male, gave us a few long shots; at first
the beasts raised the whole head and part of the neck; afterwards
nothing but the eyes were exposed. The people declare that they always
charge a man who has left a pregnant wife at home. Our only result was
the dropping of my big Beattie (2 barrelled, 24 lbs.) into the water. I
had fired it when sitting in a mangrove tree, and ‘purchase’ being
wanted, I narrowly escaped following it. The river, however, was only 2
fathoms deep, and we presently recovered it by diving: the Arabs usually
claim half the value of things thus reclaimed.
Our visit ended with a distribution of embroidered caps and Jamdani
muslins, and we received farewell visits till dark. At 5 A.M. on Feb.
2nd, after a sultry night varied by bursts of rain, which sounded like
buckets sluicing the poop, we drifted out to sea under the influence of
the Barri or land-breeze. Five hours of lazy sailing ran us to an open
road between Tanga and Panga-ni, called Mtangata, which, according to
the guides, was derived from the people living on toasted grains during
war or famine. It is evidently the Portuguese ‘Montagane,’ whose Shaykh,
with 200 men, assisted in 1528 Nuno da Cunha against the Sultan of
Mombasah. Exposed to the N. East wind, and imperfectly defended by two
low and green-capped islets, Yambe (North) and Karangú (East), it is
rendered by the surf and rollers of the Indian Ocean a place of
trembling to the coast sailors. The country appears fertile, and a line
of little villages, Kisizi, Marongo, Tamba-ni, and others, skirt the
shore. Here we spent the day, in order to inspect some ruins, where we
had been promised Persian inscriptions and other curios.
After casting anchor, I entered a canoe and was paddled across a bay
once solid ground, in whose encroaching waters, according to local
tradition, a flourishing city, extending over the whole creek side, had
been submerged. The submarine tombs were like those of the Dead Sea:
apparent to the Wasawahili’s eyes, they eluded mine. The existing
settlements are all modern, and none of them appear upon Capt. Owen’s
charts. After an hour’s work we pushed up a narrow creek, grounding at
every ten yards, and presently we reached an inlet, all mangrove above
and mud below. Landing at a village called Tongo-ni, where the people
stood to receive us, we followed the shore for a few paces, turned
abruptly to the left, over broken ground, and sighted the ruins.
Moonlight would have tempered the view: it was a grisly spectacle in the
gay and glowing shine of the sun. A city was once here; and the remnants
of its mosques showed solid and handsome building, columns of neatly cut
coralline blocks and elaborate Mihrabs, or prayer-niches. Fragments of
homesteads in times gone by everywhere cumbered the ground, and the
shattered walls, choked with the luxuriant growth of decay, sheltered in
their shade the bat and the night-jar. I was shown in an extensive
cemetery the grave of a Wali or Santon, whose very name had perished.
His last resting-place, however, was covered with a cajan roof, floored
with tamped earth, cleanly swept and garnished with a red and white
flag. Other tombs bore cacophonous Wasawahili appellations embalmed in
mortally bad Arabic epitaphs: these denoted an antiquity of about 200
years. Beyond the legend above noticed, none could give me information
concerning the people that have passed away: the architecture, however,
denoted a race far superior to the present owners of the land.
Each of the principal mausolea had its tall stele of cut coralline,
denoting, like the Egyptian and Syrian Shahadah, the position of the
corpse’s head. In one of these, the gem of the place, was fixed a
chipped fragment of Persian glazed tile, with large azure letters in the
beautiful character called ‘Ruka’a,’ enamelled on a dirty-yellow ground.
The legend,شيد روشن (Shid i raushan, the ‘bright sun’), may be part of a
panegyrical or devotional verse removed from the frieze of some tomb or
mosque. The country people hold it an impregnable proof that the men of
Ajem once ruled in Tongo-ni:[30] but the tile, like two China platters,
also mortared into the Shahadah, is evidently an importation from the
far north. It was regarded with superstitious reverence by the
Wasawahili, who informed me that some years before Kimwere, Sultan of
Usumbara, had sent a party of bold men to bear it away: of these,
nineteen died mysterious deaths, and the relic was thereupon returned to
its place. A few muslins, here representing dollars, had a wonderful
effect upon their fancies: I was at once allowed by the principal Diwan
to remove it; although no one would bear a hand to aid the Beni Nár, or
Sons of Fire, as the Arabs honourably style our countrymen. The tile, a
common encaustic affair, found its way to the Royal Geographical
Society; nor did the East African expedition feel itself the worse for
having sent it. We did not visit the Támbá-ni settlement, where,
according to the people, there is a coralline mosque, and tombs are to
be seen under the seawater.
Our purchase concluded, we returned to the Riámi, followed by the
headmen, who after refreshment of dates, Maskat Halwa (sweetmeats), and
coffee, naturally became discontented with the promised amount of
‘hishmat,’ or honorarium. At last they begged us to return, and to
assist them in digging for sweet water. There were four or five
carefully-built wells in the ruined city; but all had been exhausted by
age, and the water supplied by the lowland-pits was exceedingly
nauseous. As a rule, these people readily apply for advice and
assistance to the ‘Wazungu,’ or wise-men, as Europeans are styled; and
if showers chance to accompany the traveller, he is looked upon as a
beneficent being, not without a suspicion of white magic. Here, with $6,
we took leave of pleasant old Khalfan, our guide, a veteran, but still
hale and vigorous: no Omani Arab is, I may again remark, worth his salt
till his beard is powdered by Time.
At 5 A.M. on February 3rd, having shipped a pilot, we hoisted sail;
after three hours we ran past Maziwi Island and slipped down before the
light and tepid morning breeze to the port of Panga-ni. It was necessary
to land with some ceremony at a place which I determined to make our
starting-point into the interior. Presently after arrival I sent Said
bin Salim, in all his bravery, to deliver the Sayyid of Zanzibar’s
circular letters addressed to the Wáli, or Governor, to the Jemadar, to
the Collector of Customs, and to the several Diwáns. All this
preparation for a trifle of 80 miles! But we are in Africa; and even in
Europe such a raid, through an enemy’s country is not always easy.
My companion and I landed in the cool of the evening with our Portuguese
servants and our luggage. We were received with all honours of noise and
crowding. The orchestra consisted of three monstrous drums (Ngoma Khu),
caissons of cocoa-trunk, covered at both ends with goat-leather, and
pounded, like the pulpit, with fist; and of Siwa or bassoons of hard
blackwood, at least five feet long. These were enlivened by a pair of
Zumari, or flageolets, whose vile squeaking set the teeth on edge; by
the Zeze, or guitar; the Kinanda, or banjo; by the Barghumi or Kudu
horn; and by that instrument of dignity, the Upatu, a brass pan, the
primitive cymbal, whose bottom is performed upon by little sticks like
cabbage-stalks. The Jemadar, Asad Ullah, came en grand’ tenue. The
Diwans capered and pyrrhic’d before us with the pomp and circumstance of
drawn swords, whilst the prettiest of the slave girls, bare-headed and
with hair à la Brutus, sang and flapped their skirts over the ground,
performing a _pavane_ with a very modest and downcast demeanour, as if
treading upon a too hot floor. They reminded me of a deceased friend’s
clever doggrel—
You look so demure, ma’am, so quiet, so calm,
Ever chanting a hymn, ever singing a psalm;
Yet your thoughts are on heaven and virtue no more
Than the Man’s in the Moon’—
And as the dance waxed warm certain movements of the loins appeared, as
might be expected. A crowd of half-breeds and sooty sons of Africa stood
around to enjoy the ‘pi-pi’ of the flutes, the ‘bom-bom’ of the huge
drums, the mjimbo (singing) of the men, and the vijelejeh (lullalooing)
of the women. After half-an-hour’s endurance of this purgatory we were
led to our sleeping place, the upper rooms, or rather room, of the Wali
or Governor’s house—its owner was one Meriko, a burly black freedman of
the late Sayyid Said—and there the evening was spent by us over
considerations of ways and means.
-----
Footnote 21:
‘Imperfect sketch of a Map,’ by the Missionaries of the Church
Missionary Society in Eastern Africa. J. Rebmann, Rabia Mpia, April 4,
1850. This is the best yet published as regard the names and position
of the settlements. It places Gasi half-way between Wasin Island and
Mombasah, and it gives correctly the Jongolia-ni promontory. The same
cannot be said of Herr Augustus Petermann’s ‘Skizze nach J. Erhardt’s
Original und der Engl. Küsten Aufnahme (Captain Owen’s, I presume)
gezeichnet. Geographische Mittheilungen.’ Gotha, 1856. It omits Tanga
Bay and Cape Jongolia-ni, whilst it places the Gasi roadstead close to
Mombasah.
Footnote 22:
Sheet X. from S. lat. 6° 38′ to S. lat. 4° 23′ (Tom Shoal) is the
offending member in commission and omission. It places Chala (Kwala)
point 14 instead of 45 miles North of Tanga, and thus the latter,
which is parallel with the Northern third of Pemba Island, is thrown
25 miles north of it. Wasin Island, between Mombasah and Tanga, is
transferred five miles South of the latter. It also omits the ruins of
Mtangata. North of this, the ‘Island and Ports of Mombaza’ are
remarkably correct, but further North again the Coast, owing to the
sickness of the surveyors, was perfunctorily laid down: they seem not
to have landed at Makdishu, nor to have sought the debouchure of the
Juba river. The late Lieut. Carless, I.N., did not extend his
admirable labours beyond Ra’as Hafun. Southward, also, many important
places were left unnoticed by Capt. Owen. The Rufiji river is omitted,
and the Tanchi inlet (about S. lat. 9° 55′), a little above the mouth
of the Lindi river, does not appear upon the chart: it was till lately
a nest of slavers, who shared their secret with certain Zanzibar
merchants, till unpleasantly disturbed by H. B. Majesty’s ship
Grecian. In a return made to the House of Commons from the
Hydrographic Department (1848) it was stated that ‘many researches
might probably be made from Delagoa Bay to the Red Sea’; I therefore
proposed (April 19, 1856) a fresh survey of the Coast, but the project
found an obstacle in the Persian War.
Footnote 23:
Mvo is the Mvubu of the Kafir tongues: here the generally used term
for the Hippopotamus is Kiboko. I agree with the Rev. Mr Wakefield (p.
307), that the diminutive forms, Kiboko, plural Viboko (Viboko-ni, p.
316), are preferred to the root-name Boko, plural Maboko. It may,
however, be doubted if Boko, like Lima, be not the intensitive of
Mboko and Mlima, a hippopotamus and a mountain.
Footnote 24:
Mr Wakefield (J. R. G. Society for 1870, p. 304) gives 11 marches: of
these, however, 4 are 12 hour marches, 2 are of 8 hours, 1 is of 7
hours, and 4 are of 6 hours.
Footnote 25:
The following is a native list of the stages between Tanga and Chaga:
I leave it as written in 1857, and the reader will find the first part
almost identical with Mr Wakefield’s Route No. 1. I was surprised to
see the coincidence.
1. Tanga to Bwetti: 1 whole day (others say two), through the Wadigo
and Wasegeju jungle to a stream.
2. Dongo Khundu (red earth): half a day to a day, path straight easy
through the Wasegeju and Wadigo.
3. The Umba river: 1 day of jungle march.
4. The Mto Mchanga (Sand river): 1 day of wilderness march.
5. Mbaramo in the Usumbara country, many streams: 1 day’s march. The
hill belongs to King Kimwere’s sons, and some make it the 3rd station.
6. Gonja in the Pare country: 1 long day, the men generally dividing
it and sleeping in a jungle. Water is found flowing from a hill.
7. Kisiwa-ni in Pare: 1 day jungle march.
8. Sáme, at end of Pare: 1 day of jungle.
9. The Upo-ni river in the Wakwafi country, where robbers are feared:
men sleeping in the jungle 2 days.
10. The Rufu, or Upper Panga-ni river, whose banks are here woody, and
whose crocodile-haunted waters must be crossed in boats: 2 days. Here
is the Mhiná-ni station.
The Chaga road does not cross the stream, but runs northward with the
following stages, which are not mentioned by Mr Wakefield.
1. Mhina-ni to Arusha, a populous agricultural country: 1 day.
2. Kiboko-ni on left bank of Panga-ni river: 1 day of desert march.
3. Kahe Water of the Wakahe people: 1 long day, generally made 2, the
people sleeping in the jungle.
4. Chaga: 1 to 2 days under similar circumstances; water, however, is
found at night.
The caravans are of course armed and ready to fight: they march from
sunrise to 11 A.M., and from mid afternoon to sunset—sometimes a
forced march compels them to walk all day. The porters carry about 1½
Farsaleh. These details serve to prove that there are many points by
which the European traveller can more or less safely enter the
interior.
Footnote 26:
I will not stand godfather to this name, not being aware that in
Kikwafi there is any word ‘aro’ signifying great or greatness. The
abstract term, however, is general in South African languages. Mr
Rebmann says it may mean the ‘Mountain of Caravans’ (Jaro), that is to
say, a landmark for caravans—but this is going far afield.
Footnote 27:
Capt. Grant (a Walk across Africa, chap. viii.) has given ‘Jumah’s
Stories about Kilimanjaro.’ We could not meet with specimens of the
onyxes, carnelians, and crystals washed by rain-torrents down the
gorges and gullies of Kilima-njaro, and of which a few have found
their way to the coast—hence probably the ‘carnelian currency’ (p. 29)
of Mr Cooley’s ‘Kirimanjara.’ Of course such a circulation could never
have sufficed for one-thousandth part of the interior trade, nor could
the frozen heights of Kilima-njaro ever have ‘been the highest ridge
crossed by the road to Monomoezi.’
Footnote 28:
Mdogo in Kisawahili means a short man.
Footnote 29:
The Moslems of the islands and the coast call all the pagans Washenzi,
and the word is opposed to Mháji—a Moslem generally—and to Wazumba,
the Wasawihili of the northern region. On the continent it is, I have
said, applied to a servile or helot caste, originally from the S. West
of the Panga-ni river, and afterwards settled in Bondei.
Footnote 30:
For the Persian ruins on this coast the reader will consult Herr
Richard Branner’s Forschungen in Ost Afrika, Mittheilungen, 1868.