THE MARCH TO FUGA. ASCENT OF THE HIGHLANDS
OF EAST AFRICA. PRESENTATION TO
KING KIMWERE.
Es gibt in Central Afrika Paradiese, die mit der Zeit die Civilisation
aussuchen wird zum Besten der Menschheit.—J. VON MÜLLER.
On February 10, after a night of deep wilderness-silence, we arose
betimes, and applied ourselves to the task of porterage. The luggage was
again reduced—now to the very lowest expression. For observations we
carried sextant and horizon, two compasses and stand, and a common and a
boiling-point thermometer.[36] A waterproof carpet-bag contained
journals and materials for writing and sketching. Our arms were a
six-shooter each (4 lbs. 1 oz.), a Colt’s rifle (10 lbs. 8 oz.), a small
Büchse by Nowotny of Vienna (8 lbs. 3 oz.), a shot-gun (W. Richards, 11
lbs.), three swords, and two bowie-knives; in fact, fighting gear, with
the ammunition necessary for ourselves and men. A solid leather
portmanteau was stuffed with a change of raiment and a gift for Sultan
Kimwere, namely a coat of black broadcloth ($12), eight turbans of sprig
muslin ($8), a similar number of Surat embroidered caps ($8), and two
light-coloured cotton shawls of trifling value. Our provisions consisted
of three bags of rice ($12.50), a sack of dates ($2.25), onions, manioc,
flour, tea, and sugar, for 10 days; tobacco, pepper and salt, of which
none is procurable in the interior; a lamb, three chickens, and a bottle
of cognac, to be used in case of need. Our beds were in waterproofs,
which might also be converted into tents and awnings; a horn lantern,
wax candles, and a policeman’s dark-lantern, were added for night-work,
whilst a portable tin canteen, with a Papin’s digester, completed the
equipment. What we chiefly wanted were water-skins, beads, and
‘domestics;’ and this we presently found to our cost.
It was 6 A. M. before we were free to follow the thorny goat-track which
leads down the N. Eastern spur of Mount Tongwe. By dint of fighting our
way through rushes and tiger-grass, we struck into the Panga-ni road,
and after three hours’ winding to the north-west, we rested at some
fetid pools in a reed-grown fiumara. The sun began to sting, and we had
already occupied the shadow of a tall rock, intending to doze till the
afternoon, when Wazira, who had disappeared in the morning after hearing
the growling of a lion, returned to us, and for reasons of his own,
induced us to advance by promising better water. The path ran over stony
ground, at times plunging into the forest; there were frequent thorny
ridges, and narrow green dales or rather ravines, bordered with lovely
amphitheatres of lofty and feathery tropical trees, showing signs of
inundation during the rains. But the Kazkazi, or N. East monsoon, had
dried up the marrow of the land, and though we searched secundum artem,
as for treasure, we found no water.
Noon came, and the sun towered in its pride of place. Even whilst
toiling up the stony, dusty track, over a series of wearisome,
monotonous slopes, unvisited by the cool sea-breeze, we could not but
remark the novel aspect of the land. The ground was brick-red, a
favourite colour in Africa as in the Brazil, and its stain extended
half-way up the tree-boles, which the ants had streaked with ascending
and descending galleries. Overhead floated, cloud-like, a filmy canopy
of sea-green verdure, pierced by myriads of little sun pencils; whilst
the effulgent dome, purified as with fire from mist and vapour, set the
picture in a frame of gold and ultramarine. Painful splendours! The men
began to drop off. None but Hamdan had brought a gourd. Sha’aban
clamoured for water. Wazira, and the four slave-boys, retired to some
puddle, a discovery which they sensibly kept to themselves, leaving the
rest of the party to throw themselves upon the hot ground, and to cower
under tree and bush.
As the sun sank westward, Wazira joined us with a mouthful of lies, and
the straggling line advanced. Our purblind guide once more lagged in the
rear, yielding the lead to old Sha’aban. This worthy, whose wits were
absorbed in visions of water, strode blunderingly ahead over the hills
and far away, guided by the Khombora cone. My companion, keeping him in
sight, and I being in rear of both, we all three missed the path, and
shortly after sunset we reached a narrow fiumara. Here stood, delightful
sight! some puddles, bright-green with chickweed and brown-black with
the mire below. We quenched our thirst, and bathed our swollen feet, and
patted, and felt, and handled the fluid, as though we loved it. But even
this charming occupation had an end, and other thoughts suggested
themselves. Our shots and shouts remained unanswered, and it would have
been the merest midsummer-madness to have wandered in the dubious
moonlight about the thorny, pathless jungle. We therefore kindled a
fire, looked to our weapons, chose a soft sandy place under the bank,
and certain that Sha’aban would tend the fire like a Vestal virgin, we
were soon lulled to sleep by the music of the breeze, and by the frogs
chaunting their ancient querele upon the miry margin of the pools. That
day’s work had been only three leagues and a bittock. But—
‘These high, wild hills, and rough, uneven ways
Draw out the miles:’
it seemed as though we had marched double distance; a circumstance which
the young African traveller would do well to note.
At dawn, after our supperless bivouac, we retraced our steps, and soon
came upon our people, who shouted aloud, Khayr! Khayr! They had taken
the northern path, and they had nighted also near water, upon the upper
course of the fiumara which gave us hospitality. The Nyuzi is a rocky
bed about 20 feet broad, showing traces of violent periodical freshets,
edged with thick trees, gummy acacias, wild mulberries, and large
wood-apples (Feronias). Even in the driest season it preserves pools,
sometimes 100 feet long, and water is always procurable by digging in
the sand. The banks shelter various birds and antelopes. We found doves,
kites, and curlews, whilst large iguanas congregated around the water to
dine upon the fish-fry which die of heat in the sun-scalded shallows.
After shaking hands all around, and settling sundry small disputes about
the right and the wrong, we spread our mats in the grateful shade, and
made up for the past with tea and tobacco. During the day our Baloch
shaved one another’s heads, and plaited Sawás, or sandals of palm-leaf.
The guide engaged, as extra porters, five wild men, habited in the
simplest attire—a kilt of dried grass, with the upper ends woven into a
cord of the same material. This thatch, fastened round the waist,
extended to mid-thigh: it is cool, clean, and certainly as decent as the
garb of the Gael. All had bows and poisoned arrows, except one, who
boasted of a miserable musket and of literally a powder-horn, the vast
spoils of a cow, slung across his shoulder. The wretches were lean as
wintry wolves, and not less ravenous. We fed them with rice and Ghi: of
course they asked for more, till their stomachs, before shrunken like
empty bladders, stood out in the shape of little round lumps from the
hoop work of ribs. We had neglected to take their arms by way of pledges
to the contract: after amply feeding they arose, and with small, beady
eyes twinkling at the practical joke, they bade us adieu. Though
starving, they would not work! A few hours afterwards they fell in with
the hippopotamus, for which they were waiting, as it passed from the
feeding-grounds to its day-home in the stream. Behemoth is a helpless
beast on dry land. He was presently surrounded by his enemies,
porcupined with arrows, and soon nothing of him remained but a heap of
bones and a broad stain of blood.
We rested till 3.15 P.M. in the grateful shade, and then, persuading our
carriers to load one another, an operation still of some difficulty, we
advanced over a path dented by the spoor of wild cattle. The rolling
ground was a straggling thorn-jungle, a ‘forest without shade,’ studded
with bright blossoms: the usual black-jacks were scattered about a
plain, fired to promote the growth of fodder, and ant-hills rose
regularly like Irish ‘fairy-mounts,’ as if disposed by the hand of art.
Needless to say that all was desert of man. The Khombora Cone fell far
behind: the walls of Usagama, whose peaks, smoking by day and burning by
night, resembled fumaroles from afar, changed their blue tints first for
brown and then for a distinct green hue. At length, emerging from the
wood, we debouched upon an alluvial plain, and sighted the welcome river
flashing light through its setting of emerald trees, as it mirrored the
westing orb of day. At 6 P.M., after a 10-mile walk, traversing the tall
rushes, young trees, and thick underwood of the bank, we found ourselves
opposite Kohode, the village of a friendly Mzegura chief. ‘Sultan Mamba’
having recognized the Baloch, forthwith donned his scarlet cloak,
superintended the launching of the village canoe from its cajan house;
stood surrounded by the elders watching our transit, and, as we landed,
wrung our hands with rollicking greetings, and with those immoderate
explosive cachinnations, which render the African family to all
appearance so ‘jolly’ a race.
The Thursday was a halt at Kohode. It is the normal cultivator’s hamlet
of these regions, built upon the tall and stiff clay bank of the
Panga-ni river, here called the Rufu or Lufu. According to the people
this would mean death or destruction, no bad description of a stream
swarming with crocodiles, and we find the dissyllable commencing many
riverine names, as Rufiji, Rufuma, and Rufuta. From without the
settlement has a pleasant appearance of seclusion and rural comfort: it
suggested a village in the Tirhai or the Dehra Dhun: there was the same
peaceful quiet look, sheltered situation, and circle of tall forest.
Rendered invisible till near by screening tree, bush, and spear grass,
it is protected by a stout palisade of trunks, and this, in directions
where foes, human or bestial, may be expected, is doubled and trebled.
The entrances, in the shape of low triangles, formed by inclining the
posts en chevron, lead to a heap of wattle and dab huts, here square,
there round: they are huddled together, but where space allows they are
spread over a few hundred feet. Goats, sheep, and black cattle, which,
contrary to the custom of Guinea, thrive beyond the coast, are staked
near or inside the owners’ habitations. From the deep strong-flowing
Rufu, running purple, like Adonis after rains, with the rich loam of the
hills, and here about 80 yards wide, a bathing-place is staked off,
against the hippopotamus and the crocodile. Our Baloch, who hold, with
all Orientials, that drinking the element at night impairs digestion,
make of this an exception: and my companion, an old Himalayan, thought
that he could detect in it the peculiar rough smack of snow water. The
stream is navigable, but boats are arrested by the falls below, and
portages are not yet known in East Africa.
The villagers are cultivators, tame, harmless heathen, to all but one
another: unfortunately they have become masters of muskets, and they use
the power to plunder, and oppress those who have it not. ‘Sultan Mamba,’
the crocodile,[37] a stout, jolly, beardless young black, with the laugh
of a boatswain, and the voice of one calling in the wilderness, has made
himself a thorn in Kimwere’s side. In supplying us with beef and milk,
he jerked his thumb back towards the blue hills of Usumbara, upon whose
mountain-pass the smoke of watch-fires curled high, and declared, with
gusto, that we had already become the hill-king’s guests. Our Baloch
guard applauded this kindred soul, clapped him upon the shoulder, and
swore that with a score of men-at-arms like themselves he might soon
make himself monarch of all the mountains.
‘Sultan Mamba’ once visited Zanzibar, where his eyes were at once opened
to Koranic truth by the Kazi Muhiyy el Din: this distinguished Msawahili
D. D. conferred upon the neophyte the name of Abdullah bin Muhiyy el
Din, and thus called him son. But the old Mamba returned strong upon
Abdullah when he sniffed once more his natal air: he fell away from
prayer and ablution and grace generally, to the more congenial practices
of highwaying and of hard drinking. This amiable youth, who was endowed
with an infinite power of surprise and an inveterate itching for
beggary, sat with us half the day and inspected our weapons for hours,
wondering how he could obtain something of the kind. He asked at one
time for the Colt, at another for a barrel of gunpowder: now he offered
to barter slaves for arms and ammunition, and when night fell he privily
sent Hamdan to request a bottle of cognac. All these things were refused
in turn, and the Sultan was fain to be content with two caps, a pair of
muslins, and a cotton shawl. He seriously advised us to return with some
twenty kegs of the best gunpowder, which, as the article was ever in
demand, would bring, he assured us, excellent business in ‘black
diamonds.’ He stated that his people had but three wants—powder, ball,
and brandy, and that they could supply in return three things—men,
women, and children. Our parting was truly pathetic. He swore that he
loved us, and promised us on the down march the use of his canoe. But
when we appeared with empty hands, and neither caps nor muslins
remained, Sultan Mamba scarcely deigned to notice us, and the river
became a succession of falls and rapids.
After a night, in which the cimex lectularius had by a long chalk the
advantage of the drowsy god, we were ferried at 7 A.M., on February 13,
across the stream, attended by sundry guides. The start was generally
too late. A seasoned traveller easily bears scorching heat if he sets
out with the dawn and works into the sultry hours: after a morning spent
in the shade he will suffer more or less severely from sudden exposure.
From Kohode, which is more than half way, there are two roads to Fuga.
The direct line, running nearly due north, crosses the Highlands: at
this season it is waterless. That along the river is more than double
the length: it begins to the N. West and then turns sharply to the East.
We determined to see the stream, and we doubted the power of our
heavily-laden men to front the passes in such heat: the worst of these
walking journeys is that the least accident disables the traveller, and
accidents will happen to the best of marching parties.
Presently emerging from the thicket, we fell into the beaten track over
the dark alluvial river-plain, which here, as at Chogwe, must during
rains be a sheet of water. This is the first section of our line; the
second will be the red land with rises and falls, but gently upsloping
to the west, whilst the third and last will be the granite and sandstone
flanks of Usumbara. After a few minutes’ march we crossed by a bridge
composed of a fallen tree the Luangera (miscalled Luere by Herr Augustus
Petermann): this deep sullen affluent of the Rufu, 23 to 24 feet broad,
drains the North-Eastern Bamburri mountains. Then stretching over the
grassy expanse, we skirted two small red cones, the Ngua outliers of the
high Vugiri range. Like its eastern neighbour Usagama, this buttress of
Usumbara is the normal precipice with bluff sides of rock, well wooded
on the summit, and looking a proper place for ibex: of this animal, a
well-marked species (C. Walie), with thick and prominently ribbed horns,
has been found in the snowy heights of Abyssinia, and it probably
extends to the gigantic peaks of the Æthiopic Olympus. The Vugiri forms
part of the escarpment line separating the highlands from the river
plain to the south. The people assured us that the summit is a fertile
rolling plateau which supports an abundant population of Washenzi,
serfs, and clients, subject to King Kimwere.
We then entered upon cultivated ground, which seemed a garden after the
red waste below Tongwe. Cocoas and tall trees concealed the Rufu, which
above its junction with the Luangera becomes a mere mountain-torrent,
roaring down a rocky, tortuous bed, and forming green, tufted islets,
which are favourite sites for settlements. We can hardly, however, call
them, with Boteler, an archipelago. Our guides presently took leave,
alleging a blood-feud with the neighbouring villagers. The people, as we
passed by, flocked over their rude bridges, which extend up coast to
Brava, floors of narrow planks laid horizontally upon rough piers of
cocoa-trunks, forked to receive cross-pieces, and planted a few feet
apart. The structure is parapeted with coarse basket-work, and sometimes
supplied with fibrous creepers, jungle-ropes, knotted in 20 places, by
way of hand-rail. These the number and daring of the crocodiles render
necessary. I was once innocently sitting upon a slab of stone surrounded
by the water, and greatly enjoying the damp and the coolth, when, with a
rush and a roar, as if it had been an attack, my men fell upon me, and
hurried me to the bank. All here believe that the crocodile sweeps off
its prey with a blow of the powerful tail, and once in the water, man is
helpless against the big lizard. These constructions are at least more
artful than the Pingela or single plank of the Brazil, and the
tight-rope affairs of the Himalayas: they must much resemble the bridges
of inner Devonshire, that ‘sleeping beauty of the (near) West,’ during
the days of our grandfathers. Cows, goats, and long-tailed sheep
clustered upon the plains, and gave a pastoral aspect to the
out-of-the-way scene.
We halted from 10 A. M. to 4 P. M., under a spreading tamarind, near
Zafura, a village on an island of the Panga-ni, distant about two miles
from Mount Vugiri. Here we were surrounded by crowds, who feasted their
eyes upon us for consecutive hours. They were unarmed and dressed in
skins; they spoke the Kizegura dialect, which differs greatly from the
Kisawahili; and they appeared rather timid than dangerous. Their sultan
stalked about, spear in hand, highly offended by our not entering his
hut, and dropping some cloth; whilst sundry Wasawahili in red caps
looked daggers at the white interlopers. We tried to hire extra porters,
but having neither Merkani (American domestics) nor beads, we notably
failed.
Presently black nimbi capped the hill-tops, cooling the fierce Sirocco,
and the low growling of distant thunder warned us forwards. Resuming our
march at 3.30 P. M., we crossed a dry fiumara, trending towards the
Rufu. We traversed a hill-spur of rolling and thorny red ground, to
avoid a deep loop in the stream; we passed a place were rushes and
tiger-grass choked the bed, and where the divided waters, apparently
issuing from a black jungle and a dark rock, foamed down a steep and
jagged incline. We crossed over two bridges, and at 5 P. M. we entered a
village of Wazegura, distant from Kohode 12 miles. Msiki Mguru is a
cluster of hay-cock huts touching one another, and built upon an island
formed by divers rapid and roaring branches of the river. The headman
was sick, but we found a hospitable reception. Uninitiated in the
African secret of strewing ashes round the feet of the Kitanda or
cartel, we spent our night, although we eschewed the dirty, close huts,
battling with ant armies and other little slayers of sleep that shall be
nameless. Our hosts, speaking about the Wamasai, expressed great terror,
which was justified by the sequel. Scarcely had we left the country,
when a band of wild spearmen attacked two neighbouring villages,
slaughtered the hapless cultivators, and with pillage and pollage drove
off the cattle in triumph. Our hosts watched with astonishment the
magical process of taking an altitude of Capella, and they were anxious
to do business in female slaves, honey, goats, and sheep. Some of the
girls were rather comely, despite the tattoo that looked like boils.
None showed the least fear or bashfulness; but when the Baloch chaffed
them, and asked how they would like the ‘men in trowsers’ as husbands,
they simply replied, ‘Not at all!’
At sunrise on the next morning we resumed our march, following the left
bank of the Rufu, which is here called Kirua. For about three miles it
is a broad line of flat boulders, thicket, grass, and sedge, with divers
trickling streams between. At the Maurwi village the several branches
anastomoze, forming a deep and strong but navigable stream, about 30
yards broad, and fenced with bulging masses of vegetation. Thence we
bent northward, over rolling ground of red clay, here cultivated, there
a thorny jungle, trending to Tamota, another bluff in the hill-curtain
of Usumbara. The paths were crowded with a skin-clad and grass-kilted
race, chiefly women and small girls; the latter, by-the-by, displaying
very precocious developments, and leading children, each with a button
of hair left upon its scraped crown. The adults, toiling under loads of
manioc, holcus and maize, pumpkins and plantains, poultry, sugar-cane,
and water-pots, in which tufts of leaves had been stuck to prevent
splashing, were bound for a Golio (market) held in an open place. Here
their own land begins: none started at or fled from the white face.
[Illustration: HILLS OF USUMBARA.]
The men chip their teeth to points, and, like the Wasumbara, punch out
in childhood one incisor from the lower jaw; a piece of dried rush or
sugar-cane distends the ear-lobe to an unsightly size. All carried bows
and arrows. Some shouldered such hoes and hatchets as English children
use upon the sands: here bounteous earth, fertilized by the rains of
heaven, requires merely the scratching of a man’s staff. Others led
stunted curs, much like the pariah dogs of Hindostan, adorned with
leather collars: I afterwards saw similar pets at the Yellalah of the
Congo river. The animals are prime favourites with the savages, as were
the Spanish puppies in the days of Charles II.; they hold a dog-stew to
be a dish fit for a king. In West Africa also the meat finds many
admirers, and some missionaries in the Niger regions have described it
as somewhat glutinous, but ‘very sweet.’ Why should we not have
cynophages as well as hippophages?
The salutations of these savages provoked the comical wrath of Sidi
Bombay; and indeed they were not a little ridiculous. Acquaintances
stood afar off, as if in fear of each other, and nosed forth ‘Kua-heri,’
and protracted hans and huns, until they had relieved their minds. None,
even the women, refused to greet us, and at times Yambo—the state?—was
uttered simultaneously by a score of sable lips. Having duly stared and
been stared at, we unloaded for rest about 9.30 A. M., under a spreading
tree, near the large, double-fenced village of Pasunga, belonging to one
of Sultan Kimwere’s multitudinous sons. Again clouds obscured the air,
gathering thick upon the mountain-tops, whence came the mutterings of
thunder from afar.
Presently the pleasant coolness drew from the Baloch cries of Safar!
Safar!—let us march! At 1 P. M. we resumed our way, and presently we
passed, on our left hand, a tank of mire and water, thinly sprinkled
with paddy-birds, sand-pipers, and Egyptian geese—all exceedingly wild.
Hornbills screamed from the neighbouring trees, and on the mud my
companion shot a specimen of the gorgeous crested crane, whose back
feathers have made bonnets fine. After an hour’s march we skirted a
village where the people peremptorily commanded us to halt. We
attributed this annoyance to Wazira, who was forthwith visited with a
severe wigging. It is, however, partly the custom of the country: and
even in the far less barbarous Angola, to pass a farm-house without
entering it is to insult the proprietor. Man claims a right to hear from
the wandering stranger news—a pabulum which his soul loves: to coin the
most improbable nonsense; to be told lies with the bloom on them, and to
retail them to his neighbours, are the mental distractions of the idler,
equally the primum mobile of a Crimean ‘shave’ and of an African
palaver. But the impending rain had sharpened our tempers. We laughed in
the faces of our furious expostulators, and bidding them stop us if they
could, we pursued our way.
Presently ascending a hill and making an abrupt turn from N. West nearly
due East, we found ourselves opposite and about 10 miles distant from a
tall azure hill-curtain, the highlands of Fuga. Below, the plain was
everywhere populous with scatters of haycock villages. Lofty tamarinds,
the large-leaved plantain, and the parasol-shaped papaw grew wild
amongst the thorny trees. Water stood in black pools, and around it
waved luxuriant sugar-cane: in a moment every mouth was tearing at and
chewing the end of a long pole. The cane is of the edible species; the
officinal varieties are too luscious, cloying, and bilious to be sucked
with impunity by civilized man. After walking that day a total of 16
miles, about 4 P. M. we were driven by a violent storm of thunder,
lightning, and raw S. West wind, which at once lowered the mercury
several degrees, and caused the slaves to shudder and whimper, into the
Banda-ni or Palaver-house of a large village. Our shelter consisted of a
thatched roof propped by rough uprights and wanting walls: the floor was
half mud, half mould, and the furniture was represented by stone slabs
used as hones, and by hollowed logs once bee-hives and now seats. The
only tenants were flies and mosquitos. We lighted fires to keep off
fevers: this precaution should never be neglected by the African
traveller, even during the closest evenings of the tropical hot season.
Our Baloch, after the usual wrangle about rations, waxed melancholy,
shook their heads, and declared that the Kausi, the S. West trade-wind
that brings the wet monsoon, was fast approaching, if, indeed, it had
not regularly set in.
Sunday, February 15, dawned with one of those steady little cataclysms,
which to be seen advantageously must be seen near the Line. At 11 A.M.,
thoroughly tired of the steaming Banda-ni, our men loaded, and we set
out in a lucid interval towards the highlands. As we approached them the
rain shrank to a mere spitting, gradually ceased, and was replaced by
that reeking, fetid, sepulchral heat, which travellers in the tropics
have learned to fear. The path lay over the normal red clay, crossed low
ground where trees decayed in stagnant water, and spanned the cultivated
plain of dark mould at the foot of the mountains, with a vista of far
blue hill on the right. We rested a few minutes before attempting the
steep incline before us: the slippery, muddy way had wearied our slaves,
though aided by three porters hired that morning, and the sun,
struggling with vapours, was still hot enough to overpower the whole
party.
At 1 P. M. we proceeded to breast the pass leading from the lowland
alluvial plain to the threshold of the Æthiopic Olympus. The
gently-rising path, spread with decayed foliage, wound amongst groves of
large, coarse bananas, whose arms of satiny sheen here smoothed and
streaked, there shredded by the hill-winds, hid purple flowers and huge
bunches of green fruit. The Musa, which an old traveller describes as an
assemblage of leaves interwoven and twisted together so neatly, that
they form a plant about 15 spans high, is an aboriginal of Hindostan,
and possibly of East Africa, where, however, the seeds might easily have
been floated from the East: it grows almost spontaneously in Unyamwezi
and upon the shores of the great inland lakes. Here the banana,[38]
which maturing rapidly affords a perennial supply of fruit, and whose
enormous rate of produce has been described by many writers, is the
staff of savage life, windy as the acorn which is supposed to have fed
our forefathers in Europe. As usual where men are compelled by their
wants to utilize a single tree, the cocoa, for instance, or the
calabash, these East Africans apply the plantain to a vast variety of
uses, and allow no part of it to be wasted. The stem when green gives
water enough to quench the wanderer’s thirst and to wash his hands; the
parenchyma has somewhat the taste of cucumber, and sun-dried it is
employed for fuel. The fresh cool leaves are converted into rain-pipes,
spoons, plates, and even bottles: desiccated they make thatch, and a
substitute for wrapping-papers; and some have believed that they were
the original fig-leaves of the first man and his wife. The trunk-fibre
does good service in all the stages between thread and cord: the fruit
yields wine, sugar, and vinegar, besides bread and vegetable, and even
the flower is reduced to powder and mixed with snuff. Never transplanted
and allowed to grow from its own suckers, this banana has now
degenerated: it is easy to see, however, that it comes of a noble stock.
In parts of the interior the people have during a portion of the year
little else to live upon but this fruit, boiled, baked, and dried: it
then becomes a nauseating diet, causing flatulence, indigestion,
heart-burn, and other gastric evils. After enduring the infliction I
never again could look a banana in the face.
Issuing from the dripping canopy, we breasted a steep goat-track, we
forded a crystal burn, and having reached the midway we sat down to
enjoy the rarified air, which felt as if a weight had been suddenly
taken off our shoulders; it was São Paolo after Santos. A palpable
change of climate had already taken place, and the sunshine was tempered
with clouds which we now blessed. The view before us was extensive and
suggestive, if not beautiful. The mountain fell under our feet in rugged
folds clothed with patches of plantains, wild mulberries, custard
apples, and stately trees whose lustrous green glittered against the red
ochreous earth. The sarsaparilla vine hung in clusters and festoons from
the high supporting limbs of the tamarind; the tall toddy-palm raised
its fantastic arms over the dwarf fan palm, and bitter oranges mingled
aroma with herbs not unlike our mint and sage. Opposite and below, half
veiled with rank steam, the ‘smokes’ of Western Africa, lay the yellow
Nyika and the Wazegura lowlands: it was traversed by a serpentine of
trees marking the course of the Mkomafi, an affluent of the lower
Panga-ni river. Three dwarf cones, the Mbara Hills, bearing 230° and
distant about eight miles, crowned the desert, and far beyond the
well-wooded line of the Rufu, a uniform purple plain stretched to the
rim of the Southern and Western horizon, as far as our glasses could
trace it.
We were startled from our observations by a prodigious hubbub. The three
fresh porters positively refused to proceed unless a certain number of
cloths were sent forwards to propitiate the magnates of Fuga. This trick
was again easily traced to Wazira, who had been lecturing us all the
morning upon the serious nature of our undertaking. Sultan Kimwere was a
potent monarch, not a Mamba. His ‘ministers’ and councillors would,
unless well-paid, avert from us their countenances. We must enter with
discharge of musketry to salute the lieges, and by all means we must be
good boys and do as we were bid. The Baloch smiled contempt, and pulling
up the porters from the ground, loaded them deaf to all remonstrance.
Resuming our march with hearts beating aloud under the unusual exercise,
we climbed, rather than walked, up the deep bed of a torrent,—everywhere
the primitive zigzag. Villages then began to appear perched like eyries
upon the hilltops, and villagers gathered to watch our approach. The
Baloch asked us to taste the water of a spring that rose hard by:
sparkling in the cup it was icy cold, with a perceptible chalybeate
flavour, and the fountain-head was stained with a coat of rust. Eastern,
and we may say Southern, Africa from the Equator to the Cape, is a land
whose stones are iron, and the people declare that they have dug
_brass_. Copper has been long known, gold even longer, and the diamond,
in the South at least, is the discovery of this our day.[39]
At 4 P. M. we stood upon the Pass summit, but we found no tableland, as
about Shoa. This patch of highlands, whose limits have been roughly laid
down between N. lat. 1° and S. lat. 6°, is to the eastern regions what
the massif of the Camarones and its system in N. lat. 5° is to Western
Africa. The latter is known to be a volcano, and the former has been
also reported of igneous formation;[40] here, however, it appears in the
shape of granite and sandstones. Both are abnormal elevations, declining
to the coast-fringing ranges, which latter correspond with our Eastern
and Western Ghauts of Hindostan, and both, I may venture to predict,
will in due time be colonized by white men. In the present day there is
no better convict station than the Camarones mountain, and Usumbara
might be preferred to the Andamans as a penitentiary for criminals who
have deserved the Kálá pání.
The ‘cloud-light’ was that of our English climate: the scenery around us
reminded my companion of Almorah, me of the Blue Mountains in Southern
India. There were the same rounded cones, fertilized by rainy winds,
tapestried with velvety grass, and ribbon’d with paths of red clay; the
same ‘Sholas,’ black forest patches clothing the slopes; the same
emerald swamps through which transparent runnels continually trickled,
and little torrents and rocky linns. Here, however, we find a contrast
of aspects: the Northern and Eastern slopes are bluff and barren, whilst
the Southern and Western teem with luxuriant vegetation. The reeking and
well-irrigated plains to the West are well wooded, and we were shown the
water of Masindi, a long narrow tank, upon whose banks elephants, they
say, abound. N. Westward the mountains are apparently higher and
steeper, and about 10 miles farther West the giant flanks of Makumbara,
whose head was capped with cloud-heaps, bound our prospect. We now stood
about 4000 feet above sea level; 37 direct miles from the coast, and 74
to 75 along the winding river.
After another three-mile walk along the flanks of domed hills, and
crossing a shallow burn which seemed to freeze our parched feet, we
turned a corner and suddenly sighted, upon the summit of a grassy cone
opposite, an unfenced heap of haycock huts, a cluster of bee-hives with
concentric rings—Fuga. As we drew near, our Baloch formed up and fired a
volley, which brought out of the settlement the hind and his wife, and
his whole meine. This being one of the cities forbidden to strangers, we
were led by Wazira through timid crowds, that shrank back as we
approached, to four tattered huts, standing about 300 feet below the
settlement, and assigned by superstition as a traveller’s bungalow. Even
the son and heir of great Kimwere must here abide till the lucky hour
admits him to the royal city and presence. The cold rain and the sharp
rarified air, which would have been a tonic in a well-appointed
sanitarium, rendered any shelter acceptable: we cleared the hovels of
sheep and goats, housed our valuables, and sent Sidi Bombay to the
Sultan, requesting the honour of an interview.
Before dark appeared three bare-headed Mdoe or Ministers, who declared
in a long palaver that council must squat upon two knotty points. Primò,
why and wherefore had we entered the king’s country viâ the hostile
Wazegura? Secundò, when would his Majesty’s Mganga or Magician priest
find an hour propitious for the ceremony? Sharp-witted Hamdan, at once
and unprompted, declared us to be also Waganga, men whose powers
extended to measuring the moon and stars, and to controlling the wind
and rain. Away ran the ministers to report the wonder, and whilst they
are absent I will briefly explain what in these regions a Mganga is.
The Mganga in Angola Nganga, called by the Arabs Bassár (seer) and Tabíb
(physician), and by us priest, magician, rain-doctor, and medicine-man,
combines, as these translations show, medical with supernatural powers:
he may be considered the embryo of a sacerdotal order amongst the embryo
civilizations of man. Thus Siberia has Shamans, and Greenland Angekoks;
North America Medicine-men, and South America Pagés: the Galla believes
in his Kalishah, the Kru Republic in her Deyabos, the Congo in
Fetish-men, and the Cape Kafirs in witch doctors, who, with certain of
the missionaries, have ever been the chief originators of our colonial
troubles. In Eastern Africa, from the Somali country southwards, the
rains, so wearisome to the traveller, are a boon to the savage, who,
especially in the sub-tropical regions and those beyond the path of the
sun, sees during droughts his children and cattle dying of hunger and
thirst. Rain-charming is the popular belief of Africa, where the new
comer’s reception will generally depend upon the state of the weather.
The demand produces a supply of intellectuals, who, for the
consideration of a lazy monastic kind of life, abundant respect from an
ignorant laity, and the great political influence which they command,
boldly assert an empire over the meteors. The folly is not confined, be
it said, to these barbarous lands: in Ireland the owner of a four-leaved
shamrock can or could cause or stop showers, and the Fins on board our
ships still deal with the clerk of the weather for fair winds. The Hindu
Jogi, the Bayragi, and the Sita-Rami have similar powers: at Porebunder
I heard of a man who, when torrents of rain injured the crops, was
threatened by the Raja with a ‘cotton coat,’ that is to say, with a
padded dressing-gown, well oiled and greased, girt tightly round him,
and set on fire. In civilization the last remnant of the barbarous
belief is the practice of public prayer for rain, a process far less
troublesome and not nearly so efficacious as planting trees and
preserving the land from being disforested. During the last threatened
drought in Syria the people of Bayrut assembled in the main square, all
separated into groups according to their faiths, of which there are a
couple of dozen. One party was of children, who, when the seniors
failed, thus addressed heaven: ‘O Lord, if Thou disregard the petitions
of our parents, they being sinners, and so forth, at least listen to us,
being still in our virginal innocence!’ But the rain did not come, and
the innocents went away unwhipped. Had the late Fuad Pasha been there he
would, before sanctioning the assemblage, have consulted a
meteorologist.
Near the Line it is easy to predict rain, and with thermometer and
hygrometer—the latter far better than a barometer—man should never make
a mistake. The Mganga delays his incantations till mists gather upon the
mountain-tops and the Fetish is finished, as the cooling air can no
longer support the superabundant moisture. Success brings both solid
pudding and empty praise: failure, the trifling inconvenience of
changing residence. Amongst the fiercer races, however, the wizard not
unfrequently falls a victim to hope deferred, and there are parts of
Africa where, as the venerable Mr Moffat says, he seldom, if ever, dies
upon his mat.
The Mganga of Usumbara has manifold duties. He must as often be a
rain-stopper as a rain-healer. He sprinkles the stranger with the blood
of sheep and other medicines, the aspersory being a cow’s tail: upon the
departing guest he gently spits, bidding him go in peace and do the
people no harm. He marks ivory with magic signs, to ensure the tusk
safely reaching the coast. During sickness he lays the ghost or haunting
fiend, and applies the rude simples which here act ‘second causes.’ He
presides at the savage ordeals. If the Sultan lose health or a villager
die, he finds out the guilty one that bewitched the sufferer, and hands
him over to the ‘secular arm’ for burning, cutting to pieces, or other
such well-merited doom. Here, unless well fee’d, he thrusts into the
accused’s mouth a red-hot hatchet, which has no power to burn the
innocent or the strong-nerved guilty: in other parts he makes him or her
swallow a cup of poison, which is duly tempered for the wealthy. In
Usumbara the instrument of his craft is a bundle of small sticks: these
form, when thrown upon the ground, certain figures: hence the Arabs
translate Báo, or Uganga—the Mganga’s art—by Raml or Geomancy, whose
last and ignoblest form is the ‘Book of Fate,’ attributed to Napoleon I.
Similarly in Kafir land, sorcerers use sticks or bones, which are
supposed to have the power of motion.
The Waganga are mostly open to the persuasions of cloth and beads. One
saw the spirit of a pale-face occupying a chair which was brought as a
present to King Kimwere, and broadly insinuated that none but the wise
deserved such seat. But let not the reader suppose that these men are
pure impostors. It would be, indeed, a subtle task to trace how far
those who deal in the various mysteries called supernaturalisms are
deceived or are deceivers, impostors or believers. Fools and knaves
there are, of course, in abundance; but there is a residue, a tertium
quid, which is neither one nor the other, and yet which custom and
education condemn to act like both. Mental reservation and pious frauds
are certainly not monopolized by civilization, nor by any stage of
society. There is no folly conceivable by the mind of man in which man
has not honestly, firmly, and piously placed his trust. And when man
lays down his life, or gives up everything which makes life worth living
for, in testimony to his belief, he proves conclusively, not the truth
of his tenets, but that he believed them to be true: he compels us to
wonder at the obstinacy, rather than to admire the fortitude, of the
martyr.
The word Bassár, a seer, forms, I may here remark, a connecting link
between the mental sight of the Arabs, the second-sight of Scotland,
and, to mention no others, the clairvoyance of modern mesmerism. It
alludes to that abnormal exertion of the will, sometimes verging upon
the ecstatic state, which enables the brain to behold before it, and
without external sight, a panorama of the past, the present and the
future; whilst a thousand instances have shown that such scenic
exhibitions of things absolutely unknown to the seer have actually come
to pass. Almost invariably also the Mganga has, or induces, the ‘disease
which precedes the power to divine’; and he attributes it to ancestral
ghosts, which would now be called spirits.
At 6 P. M. the ‘Ministers’ ran back, and summoned us, breathless, to the
‘Palace.’ They led the way, through wind, and rain, and gathering gloom,
to a clump of the usual huts, half hidden by trees, and spreading over a
little eminence opposite to and below Fuga. We were allowed but three
Baloch as escort. Their matchlocks were taken away, and a demand was put
in for our swords, which of course we insisted upon retaining. The
natural suspiciousness of the negro is always exaggerated by being in
the neighbourhood of a more advanced race. Here even Hamdan became a
Rustam.
Sultan Kimwere half rose from his couch as we entered, and motioned us
to sit upon low stools in front of him. The Simba wa Muigni—Lion of the
Lord[41]—was an old, old man (un vieux vieux), with emaciated frame, a
beardless, wrinkled face like a grandam’s, a shaven head, disfurnished
jaws, and hands and feet stained with leprous spots. We saw nothing of
the ‘lion-like royal personage,’ the ‘tall and corpulent form with
engaging features,’ and the ‘large eyes, red and penetrating, which cast
a powerful look’ upon Dr Krapf in September, 1848, when the ‘king’
visited him, with a Highland tail and heralds singing out, ‘O Lion!’ His
subjects declare him to be a centagenarian, and he is certainly dying of
age and decay—the worst of diseases. The royal dress was a Surat cap
much the worse for wear, and a loin-wrap as tattered. He was covered, as
he lay upon his Jágá, or cot of bamboo and cowskin, with the doubled
cotton cloth called in India a ‘do-pattá,’ and he rested upon a Persian
rug apparently coeval with his person.
The hut resembled that of a simple cultivator; possibly it was as good
as the palace of wicker-wattles occupied by Henry II. at Dublin. It was
redolent of high dignitaries, dirty as their prince, some fanning him,
others chatting, and all puffing from long-stemmed pipes with small
ebony bowls the Abnús, which, according to the Baloch, is found growing
all over the country. Our errand was inquired, and we were duly welcomed
to Fuga: as the two Wasawahili secretaries had long ago been dismissed,
and none could read the Sayyid of Zanzibar’s introductory letter, I was
compelled to act clerk. The centagenarian had heard that we were
accustomed to scrutinize trees and stones as well as stars: he therefore
decided that we really were European Waganga, or medicine-men, and he
directed us at once to compound a draught which would restore him that
evening to health and strength. I objected that all our drugs had been
left behind at Panga-ni: by no means satisfied with the excuse, he
signified that we might wander about the hills, and seek the plants
required.
After half an hour’s conversation, Hamdan being our interpreter, we were
dismissed with a renewal of welcome. On our return to the ‘Traveller’s
Bungalow,’ the present was forwarded to the Sultan with the usual
ceremony, and we found awaiting us a fine bullock, a basket full of
Sima—young Indian corn pounded and boiled to a hard, thick paste—and
balls of unripe bananas, peeled and mashed up with sour milk, thus
converting the fruit to a vegetable. Our Baloch at once addressed
themselves to the manufacturing of beef, and they devoured their steaks
with such a will that unpleasant symptoms presently declared themselves
in camp.
That day we had covered 10 miles, equal, perhaps, to 30 on a decent road
in a temperate clime. The angry blast, the dashing rain, and the
groaning trees, formed a concert which, heard from within a warm hut,
affected us pleasurably: I would not have exchanged it for the music of
Verdi. We slept sweetly, as only travellers can sleep.
-----
Footnote 36:
A delicate mercurial barometer (Adie), obligingly lent to me by the
Secretary of the Bombay Geographical Society, was left for comparison
at Zanzibar with the apothecary of the Consulate. On a rough mountain
tour such an instrument would certainly have come to grief, as it
afterwards did on the lowlands of the Continent. The instruments
recommended by the Medical Board, Bombay, did not reach us in time;
and the same was the case with the reflecting circle kindly despatched
by Mr Francis Galton. We had in all four bath thermometers, and two B.
Ps.; one used by Capt. Smyth, R. N., when crossing the Andes, was
given to us by Col. Hamerton; and another (Newman) was rendered
useless by mercury settling in the upper bulb, air having been
carelessly left in the tube by the maker—a frequent offence. We had no
sympiesometers. The instrument is portable, but the experience of
naval officers pronounces against it within the tropics, and
especially near the Line (6° to 8°), where its extreme sensitiveness
renders it useless. Aneroids also must be carried in numbers, and be
compared with standard instruments not so likely to be deranged: they
are seldom true, and are liable to vary when ascending or descending
the scale. My latest explorations have been made with glass tubes,
supplied by Mr Louis Casella, of Hatton Garden: they are portable, not
easily broken, and, best of all, they give correct results. Of course
it is well to carry aneroids for all except crucial stations; and as
for B. Ps., they are not worth the trouble of carrying.
Footnote 37:
Curious to say, M. Erhardt, who was certainly no mean linguist
(Conclusion to Dr Krapf’s Travels, pp. 500 and 504), has translated,
by some curious mistake, Kiboko crocodile, and Mamba hippopotamus. In
the latter error he is of course followed by Mr Cooley, who (Memoir on
the Lake Regions, p. 9) finds that I am ‘disingenuous’ in affecting to
be astonished that he translates Mamba by hippopotamus.
Footnote 38:
The banana is the Musa Sapientum: the plantain is the M. Paradisiaca,
and Linnæus picturesquely adopted Musa from the Arabic Mauz (موز): in
India the small species is called plantain, the large horse-plantain,
and the French term both ‘bananes.’ In E. Africa there are
half-a-dozen varieties of the ‘Ndizi.’
Footnote 39:
Heeren believes, with Pliny, that the ancients discovered diamonds
mingled with gold in certain N. African localities, especially Meroe.
Footnote 40:
Doenyo Mbúro, for instance, placed by Mr Wakefield south of the Salt
Lake Naivasha or Balibali.
Footnote 41:
Dr Krapf writes, ‘Simba wa Muene,’ i. e. the Lion is Himself, or the
Lion of the Self-Existent (God).