Chapter I (8)

Isa bin Hijji did us various good services. He and his companions kindly waited some days to superintend our preparations for crossing the Rubeho Range. They supplied useful hints for keeping the caravan together at different places infamous for desertion. They gave me valuable information about Ugogo and Ujiji, and they placed at my disposal their house at Unyanyembe. They “wigged” the Kirangozi, or guide, for carelessness in not building a kraal-fence every night, and for not bringing in, as the custom is, wood and water. Kidogo was reproved for allowing his men to load our asses with their luggage, and the Baloch for their continual complaints about food. The latter had long forgotten the promises made at Muhama; they returned at every opportunity to their old tactic, that of obtaining, by all manner of pretexts, as much cloth and beads as possible, ostensibly for provisions, really for trading and buying slaves. At Rumuma they declared that one cloth per diem starved them. Said bin Salim sent them its value, about fifty pounds of beans, and they had abundant rations of beef and mutton, but they could not eat beans. At Inenge they wanted flour, and as the country people sold only grain, they gave themselves up to despair. I sent for the Jemadar and told him, in presence of the merchants, that, as a fitting opportunity had presented itself, I was willing to weed the party, by giving official dismissal to Khudabakhsh and Belok, to the invalid Ismail and his musical “brother” Shahdad. All four, when consulted, declared that they would die rather than blacken their faces by abandoning the “Haji Abdullah;” that same evening, however, as I afterwards learned, they wrote, by means of the Arabs, a heartrending complaint to their chief Jemadar at Zanzibar, declaring that he had thrown them into the fire (of affliction), and that their blood was upon his hands. My companion prepared official papers and maps for the Secretary of the Royal Geographical Society, and I again indented upon the Consul and the Collector of Customs for drugs, medical comforts, and an extra supply of cloth and beads, to the extent of 400 dollars, for which a cheque upon my agents in Bombay was enclosed. The Arabs took leave of us on the 2nd September. I charged them repeatedly not to spread reports of our illness, and I saw them depart with regret. It had really been a relief to hear once more the voice of civility and sympathy.

The great labour still remained. Trembling with ague, with swimming heads, ears deafened by weakness, and limbs that would hardly support us, we contemplated with a dogged despair the apparently perpendicular path that ignored a zigzag, and the ladders of root and boulder, hemmed in with tangled vegetation, up which we and our starving drooping asses were about to toil. On the 10th September we hardened our hearts, and began to breast the Pass Terrible. My companion was so weak that he required the aid of two or three supporters; I, much less unnerved, managed with one. After rounding in two places wall-like sheets of rock--at their bases green grass and fresh water were standing close to camp, and yet no one had driven the donkeys to feed--and crossing a bushy jungly step, we faced a long steep of loose white soil and rolling stones, up which we could see the Wanyamwezi porters swarming, more like baboons scaling a precipice than human beings, and the asses falling after every few yards. As we moved slowly and painfully forwards, compelled to lie down by cough, thirst, and fatigue, the “sayhah” or war-cry rang loud from hill to hill, and Indian files of archers and spearmen streamed like lines of black ants in all directions down the paths. The predatory Wahumba, awaiting the caravan’s departure, had seized the opportunity of driving the cattle and plundering the villages of Inenge. Two passing parties of men, armed to the teeth, gave us this information; whereupon the negro “Jelai” proposed, fear-maddened--a _sauve qui peut_--leaving to their fate his employers, who, bearing the mark of Abel in this land of Cain, were ever held to be the head and front of all offence. Khudabakhsh, the brave of braves, being attacked by a slight fever, lay down, declaring himself unable to proceed, moaned like a bereaved mother, and cried for drink like a sick girl. The rest of the Baloch, headed by the Jemadar, were in the rear; they had levelled their matchlocks at one of the armed parties as it approached them, and, but for the interference of Kidogo, blood would have been shed.

By resting after every few yards, and by clinging to our supporters, we reached, after about six hours, the summit of the Pass Terrible, and there we sat down amongst the aromatic flowers and bright shrubs--the gift of mountain dews--to recover strength and breath. My companion could hardly return an answer; he had advanced mechanically and almost in a state of coma. The view from the summit appeared eminently suggestive, perhaps unusually so, because disclosing a retrospect of severe hardships, now past and gone. Below the foreground of giant fractures, huge rocks, and detached boulders, emerging from a shaggy growth of mountain vegetation, with forest glens and hanging woods, black with shade gathering in the steeper folds, appeared, distant yet near, the tawny basin of Inenge, dotted with large square villages, streaked with lines of tender green, that denoted the water-courses, mottled by the shadows of flying clouds, and patched with black where the grass had been freshly fired. A glowing sun gilded the canopy of dense smoke which curtained the nearer plain, and in the background the hazy atmosphere painted with its azure the broken wall of hill which we had traversed on the previous day.

Somewhat revived by the _tramontana_ which rolled like an ice-brook down the Pass, we advanced over an easy step of rolling ground, decked with cactus and the flat-topped mimosa, with green grass and bright shrubs, to a small and dirty khambi, in a hollow flanked by heights, upon which several settlements appeared. At this place, called the “Great Rubeho,” in distinction from its western neighbour, I was compelled to halt. My invalid sub. had been seized with a fever-fit that induced a dangerous delirium during two successive nights; he became so violent that it was necessary to remove his weapons, and, to judge from certain symptoms, the attack had a permanent cerebral effect. Death appeared stamped upon his features, yet the Baloch and the sons of Ramji clamoured to advance, declaring that the cold disagreed with them.

On the 12th September the invalid, who, restored by a cool night, at first proposed to advance, and then doubted his ability to do so, was yet hesitating when the drum-signal for departure sounded without my order. The Wanyamwezi porters instantly set out. I sent to recal them, but they replied that it was the custom of their race never to return; a well-sounding principle against which they never offended except to serve their own ends. At length a hammock was rigged up for my companion, and the whole caravan broke ground.

The path ran along the flank of an eminence, and, ascending a second step, as steep but shorter than the Pass Terrible, placed us at the Little Rubeho, or Windy Pass, the summit of the third and westernmost range of the Usagara Mountains, raised 5,700 feet above the sea-level. It is the main water-parting of this ghaut-region. At Inenge the trend is still to the S.E.; beyond Rubeho the direction is S.W. Eventually, however, the drainage of both slope and counter-slope finds its way to the Indian Ocean, the former through the Mukondokwa and the Kingani, the latter through the Rwaha and the Rufiji Rivers.

A lively scene awaited my arrival at the “Little Rubeho.” From a struggling mass of black humanity, which I presently determined to be our porters, proceeded a furious shouting and yelling. Spears and daggers flashed in the sun, and cudgels played with a threshing movement which promised many a broken head. At the distance of a few yards, with fierce faces and in motionless martial attitudes, the right hand upon the axe-handle stuck in the waist-belt, and the left grasping the bow and two or three polished assegais, stood a few strong fellows, the forlorn hope of the fray. In the midst of the crowd, like Norman Ramsay’s troop begirt by French cavalry--to compare small things with great--rose and fell the chubby, thickset forms of Muinyi Wazira and his four Wak’hutu, who, undaunted by numbers, were dealing death to nose and scalp. Charge! Mavi ya Gnombe (“Bois de Vache”) charge! On! Mashuzi (“Fish Fry-soup”) on! Bite, Kuffan Kwema (“To die is good”) bite, Smite, Na daka Mali (“I want wealth”) smite! At length, when

“Blood (t’was from the nose) began to flow,”

a little active interference rescued the five “enfans perdus.” The porters had been fighting upon the question whether the men with small-pox should, or should not, be admitted into the kraal, and Muinyi Wazira and his followers, under the influence of potations which prevented their distinguishing friend from foe, had proved themselves, somewhat unnecessarily heroes. It is usually better to let these quarrels work themselves out; if prematurely cut short, the serpent, wrath, is scotched, not slain. A little “punishment” always cools the blood, and secures peace and quiet for the future. Moreover, the busy peacemaker here often shares the fate of M. Porceaugnac, and earns the reward of those who, according to the proverb, in quarrels interpose. It is vain to investigate, where all is lie, the origin of the squabble. Nothing easier, as the Welsh justice was fond of declaring, than to pronounce judgment after listening to one side of the question; but an impartial hearing of both would strike the inquiring mind with a sense of impotence. Perhaps it is not unadvisable to treat the matter after the fashion adopted by a “police-officer,” a certain captain in the _X. Y. Z._ army, who deemed it his duty to discourage litigiousness and official complaints amongst the quarrelsome Sindhi population of Hyderabad. The story is somewhat out of place; though so being, I will here recount it.

Would enter, for instance, two individuals in an oriental costume considerably damaged; one has a cloth carefully tied round his head, the other has artificially painted his eye and his ear with a few drops of blood from the nose. They express their emotions by a loud drumming of the tom-tom accompanying the high-sounding Cri de Haro--Faryad! Faryad! Faryad!--

“I’ll ‘Faryad’ yer, ye”----

After these, the usual appellatives with which the “native” was in those days, on such occasions received, the plaintiff is thus addressed:--

“Well, you--fellow! your complaint, what is it?”

“Oh, Sahib! Oh, cherisher of the poor! this man who is, the same hath broken into my house, and made me eat a beating, and called my ma and sister naughty names, and hath stolen my brass pot, and--”

“Bas! bas! enough!” cries the beak; “tie him”--the defendant--“up, and give him three dozen with thine own hand.”

The wrathful plaintiff, as may be imagined, is nothing loath. After being vigorously performed upon by the plaintiff aforesaid, the defendant is cast loose, and is in turn addressed as follows:--

“Well, now, you fellow! what say you?”

“Oh, my lord and master! Oh, dispenser of justice! what lies hath not this man told? What abominations hath he not devoured? Behold (pointing to his war-paint) the sight! He hath met me in the street; he hath thrown me down; he hath kicked and trampled upon me; he hath--”

“Bas! enough!” again cries the beak: “tie him--the plaintiff--up, and see if you can give _him_ a good three dozen.”

Again it may be imagined that the three dozen are well applied by the revengeful defendant, and that neither that plaintiff nor that defendant ever troubled that excellent “police-officer” again.

On Rubeho’s summit we found a single village of villanous Wasagara; afterwards “made clean”--as the mild Hindu expresses the extermination of his fellow-men--by a caravan in revenge for the murder of a porter. We were delayed on the hill-top a whole day, despite the extreme discomfort of all hands. Water had to be fetched from a runnel that issued from a rusty pool shaded by tilted-up strata of sandstone, at least a mile distant from camp. Rain fell daily, alternating with eruptions of sun; a stream of thick mist rolled down the ravines and hollows, and at night the howling winds made Rubeho their meeting-place. Yet neither would the sons of Ramji carry my companion’s hammock, nor would Said bin Salim allow his children to be so burdened; moreover, whatever measures one attempted with the porters, the other did his best to thwart. “Men,” say the Persians, “kiss an ass for an object.” I attempted with Kidogo that sweet speech which, according to Orientals, is stronger than chains, and administered “goose’s oil” in such quantities that I was graciously permitted to make an arrangement for the transport of my companion with the Kirangozi.

On the 14th September, our tempers being sensibly cooled by the weather, we left the hill-top and broke ground upon the counterslope or landward descent of the Usagara Mountains. Following a narrow footpath that wound along the hill-flanks, on red earth growing thick clumps of cactus and feathery mimosa, after forty-five minutes’ march we found a kraal in a swampy green gap, bisected by a sluggish rivulet that irrigated scanty fields of grain, gourds, and water-melons, the property of distant villagers. For the first time since many days I had strength enough to muster the porters and to inspect their loads. The outfit, which was expected to last a year, had been half exhausted in three months. I summoned Said bin Salim, and passed on to him my anxiety. Like a veritable Arab, he declared, without the least emotion, that we had enough to reach Unyanyembe, where we certainly should be joined by the escort of twenty-two porters. “But how do you know that?” I inquired. “Allah is all-knowing,” replied Said; “but the caravan _will_ come.” Such fatalism is infectious. I ceased to think upon the subject.

On the 15th September, after sending forward the luggage, and waiting as agreed upon for the return of the porters to carry my companion, I set out about noon, through hot sunshine tempered by the cool hill-breeze. Emerging from the grassy hollow, the path skirted a well-wooded hill and traversed a small savannah, overgrown with stunted straw and hedged in by a bushy forest. At this point massive trees, here single, there in holts and clumps, foliaged more gloomily than churchyard yews, and studded with delicate pink-flowers, rose from the tawny sun-burned expanse around, and defended from the fiery glare braky rings of emerald shrubbery, sharply defined as if by the forester’s hand. The savannah extended to the edge of a step which, falling deep and steep, suddenly disclosed to view, below and far beyond the shaggy ribs and the dark ravines and folds of the foreground, the plateau of Ugogo and its Eastern desert. The spectacle was truly impressive. The vault above seemed “an ample æther,” raised by its exceeding transparency higher than it is wont to be. Up to the curved rim of the western horizon, lay, burnished by the rays of a burning sun, plains rippled like a yellow sea by the wavy reek of the dancing air, broken towards the north by a few detached cones rising island-like from the surface, and zebra’d with long black lines, where bush and scrub and strip of thorn jungle, supplanted upon the watercourses, trending in mazy network southwards to the Rwaha River, the scorched grass and withered canes-stubbles, which seemed to be the staple growth of the land. There was nothing of effeminate or luxuriant beauty, nothing of the flush and fulness characterising tropical Nature, in this first aspect of Ugogo. It appeared what it is, stern and wild,--the rough nurse of rugged men,--and perhaps the anticipation of dangers and difficulties ever present to the minds of those preparing to endure the waywardness of its children, contributed not a little to the fascination of the scene. After lingering for a few minutes upon the crest of the step, with feelings which they will understand who after some pleasant months--oases in the grim deserts of Anglo-Indian life--spent among the tree-clad heights, the breezy lakes, and the turfy valleys of the Himalayas and the Neilgherries, sight from their last vantage-ground the jaundiced and fevered plains below, we scrambled down an irregular incline of glaring red clay and dazzling white chalk, plentifully besprinkled with dark-olive silex in its cherty crust. Below the descent was a level space upon a long ridge, where some small villages of Wasagara had surrounded themselves with dwarf fields of holcus, bajri, and maize. A little beyond this spot, called the “Third Rubeho,” we found a comfortless kraal on uneven ground, a sloping ledge sinking towards a deep ravine.

At the third Rubeho we were delayed for a day--as is customary before a “Tirikeza”--by the necessity of laying in supplies for a jungle march, and by the quarrels of the men. The Baloch were cross as naughty children, ever their case when cold and hungry: warm and full, they become merry as crickets. The Kirangozi in hot wrath brought his flag to Said bin Salim, and threatened to resign, because he had been preceded on the last stage by two of the Baloch: his complaints of this highly irregular proceeding were with difficulty silenced by force of beads. I remarked, however, a few days afterwards, when travelling through Ugogo, that the Kirangozi, considering himself in danger, applied to me for a vanguard of matchlockmen. The sons of Ramji combined with the porters in refusing to carry my companion, and had Bombay and Mabruki not shown good-will, we might have remained a week in the acme of discomfort. The asses, frightened by wild beasts, broke loose at night, and one was lost. The atmosphere was ever in excesses of heat and cold: in the morning, a mist so thick that it displayed a fog-rainbow--a segment of an arch, composed of faint prismatic tints--rolled like a torrent down the ravine in front: the sun, at noon, made us cower under the thin canvas, and throughout the twenty-four hours a gale like a “vent de bise,” attracted by the heat of the western plains, swept the encamping ground.

Sending forward my invalid companion in his hammock, I brought up the rear: Said bin Salim, who had waxed unusually selfish and surly, furtively left to us the task; he wore only sandals--he could not travel by night. Some of the Baloch wept at the necessity of carrying their gourds and skins.

On the 17th September, about 2 P.M., we resumed the descent of the rugged mountains. The path wound to the N.W. down the stony and bushy crest of a ridge with a deep woody gap on the right hand: presently after alternations of steep and step, and platforms patched with odoriferous plants, it fell into the upper channel of the Mandama or the Dungomaro, the “Devil’s Glen.” Dungomaro in Kisawahili is the proper name of an evil spirit, not in the European but in the African sense,--some unblessed ghost who has made himself unpopular to the general;--perhaps the term was a facetiousness on the part of the sons of Ramji.

It was a “via mala” down this great surface-drain of the western slopes, over boulders and water-rolled stones reposing upon deep sand, and with branches of thorny trees in places canopying the bed. After a march of five hours, I found the porters bivouacking upon a softer spot, and with difficulty persuaded four of the sons of Ramji to return and to assist the weary stragglers: horns were sounded, and shots were fired to guide the Baloch, who did not, however, arrive before 10 P.M.

On the 18th September, a final march of four hours placed us in the plains of Ugogo. Leaving the place of the last night’s bivouac, we pursued the line of the Dungomaro, occasionally quitting it where boulders obstructed progress, and presently we came to its lower bed, where perennial rills, exuding from its earth-walls and trickling down its side, veiled the bottom with a green and shrubby perfumed vegetation. As the plain was neared, the difficulties increased, and the scenery became curious. The Dungomaro appeared a large crevasse in lofty rocks of pink and gray granite, streaked with white quartz, and pudding’d with greenstone and black horneblend; the sole, strewed with a rugged layer of blocks, was side-lined with narrow ledges and terraces of brown humus, supporting dwarf cactus and stunted thorny trees; whilst high above towered stony wooded peaks, closing in the view on all sides. Farther down the bed huge boulders, sunburnt, and stained by the courses of rain-torrents, rose, perpendicularly as walls, to the height of one hundred and one hundred and twenty feet, and there the flooring was a sheet or slide of shiny and shelving rock, with broad fissures, and steep drops, and cups, “potholes,” baths, and basins, filed and cut by the friction of the gravelly torrents, regularly as if turned with the lathe. Where water lay, deep mud and thick clumps of grass and reed forced the path to run along the ledges at the sides of the base. Gradually, as the angle of inclination became more obtuse, the bed widened out, the tall stone-walls gave way to low earth-banks clad with gum-trees; pits, serving as wells, appeared in the deep loose sand, and the Dungomaro, becoming a broad, smooth Fiumara, swept away verging southwards into the plain. Before noon, I sighted from a sharp turn in the bed our tent pitched under a huge sycomore, on a level step that bounded the Fiumara to the right. It was a pretty spot in a barren scene, grassy, and grown with green mimosas, spreading out their feathery heads like parachutes, and shedding upon the ground a filmy shade that fluttered and flickered in the draughty breeze.

The only losses experienced during the scrambling descent, were a gun-case, containing my companion’s store of boots, and a chair and table. The latter, being indispensable on a journey where calculations, composition, and sketching were expected, I sent, during the evening halts, a detachment consisting of Muinyi Wazira, the Baloch, Greybeard Musa, and a party of slaves, to bring up the articles, which had been cache’d on the torrent bank. They returned with the horripilatory tale of the dangers lately incurred by the Expedition, which it appeared from them had been dogged by an army of Wasagara, thirsting for blood and furious for booty:--under such circumstances, how could they recover the chair and table? Some months afterwards an up-caravan commanded by a Msawahili found the articles lying where we had left them, and delivered them, for a consideration, to us at Unyanyembe. The party sent from Ugogo doubtless had passed a quiet, pleasant day, dozing in the shade at the nearest well.

CHAP. VII.

THE GEOGRAPHY AND ETHNOLOGY OF THE SECOND REGION.

The second or mountain region extends from the western frontier of K’hutu, at the head of the alluvial valley, in E. long. 37° 28′, to the province of Ugogi, the eastern portion of the flat table-land of Ugogo, in E. long. 36° 14′. Its diagonal breadth is 85 geographical and rectilinear miles; and native caravans, if lightly laden, generally traverse it in three weeks, including three or four halts. Its length cannot be estimated. According to the guides, Usagara is a prolongation of the mountains of Nguru, or Ngu, extending southwards, with a gap forming the fluviatile valley of the Rwaha or Rufiji River, to the line of highlands of which Njesa in Uhiao is supposed to be the culminating apex: thus the feature would correspond with the Eastern Ghauts of the Indian Peninsula. The general law of the range is north and south; in the region now under consideration, the trend is from north by west to south by east, forming an angle of 10° 12′ with the meridian. The Usagara chain is of the first order in East Africa; it is indeed the only important elevation in a direct line from the coast to western Unyamwezi; it would hold, however, but a low grade in the general system of the earth’s mountains. The highest point above sea-level, observed by B. P. Therm., was 5,700 feet; there are, however, peaks which may rise to 6,000 and even to 7,000 feet, thus rivalling the inhabited portion of the Neilgherries. As has appeared, the chain, where crossed, was divided into three parallel ridges by longitudinal plains.

Owing to the lowness of the basal regions at the seaward slope, there is no general prospect of the mountains from the East, where, after bounding the plains of K’hutu on the north, by irregular bulging lines of rolling hill, the first gradient of insignificant height springs suddenly from the plain. Viewed from the west, the counterslope appears a long crescent, with the gibbus to the front, and the cusps vanishing into distance; the summit is in the centre of the half-moon, whose profile is somewhat mural and regular. The flanks are rounded lumpy cones, and their shape denotes an igneous and primary origin, intersected by plains and basins, the fractures of the rocky system. Internally the lay, as in granitic formations generally, is irregular; the ridges, preserving no general direction, appear to cross one another confusedly. The slope and the counterslope are not equally inclined. Here, as usual in chains fringing a peninsula, the seaward declivities are the more abrupt; the landward faces are not only more elongated, but they are also shortened in proportion as the plateau into which they fall is higher than the mountain-plains from which they rise. To enter, therefore, is more toilsome than to return.

From the mingling of lively colours, Usagara is delightful to the eye, after the monotonous tracts of verdure which pall upon the sight at Zanzibar and in the river valleys. The subsoil, displayed in the deeper cuts and ravines, is either of granite, greenstone, schiste, or a coarse incipient sandstone, brown or green, and outcropping from the ground with strata steeply tilted up. In the higher elevations, the soil varies in depth from a few inches to thirty feet; it is often streaked with long layers of pebbles, apparently water-rolled. The colour is either an ochreish brick-red, sometimes micaceous, and often tinted with oxide of iron; or it is a dull grey, the debris of comminuted felspar, which, like a mixture of all the colours, appears dazzlingly white under the sun’s rays. The plains and depressions are of black earth, which after a few showers becomes a grass-grown sheet of mire, and in the dry season a deeply-cracked, stubbly savannah. Where the elevations are veiled from base to summit with a thin forest, the crops of the greenstone and sandstone strata appear through a brown coat of fertile humus, the decay of vegetable matter. A fossil Bulimus was found about 3,000 feet above sea-level, and large Achatinæ, locally called Khowa, are scattered over the surface. On the hill-sides, especially in the lower slopes, are strewed and scattered erratic blocks and boulders, and diminutive pieces of white, dingy-red, rusty-pink, and yellow quartz, with large irregularly-shaped fragments and small nodules of calcareous kunkur. Where water lies deep below the surface, the hills and hill-plains are clothed with a thin shrubbery of mimosas and other thorny gums. Throughout Eastern Africa these forests are the only spots in which travelling is enjoyable: great indeed is their contrast with the normal features--bald glaring fields, fetid bush and grass, and monotonous expanses of dull dead herbage, concealing swamps and water-courses, hedged in by vegetation whose only varieties are green, greener, and greenest. In these favoured places the traveller appears surrounded by a thick wood which he never reaches, the trees thinning out as he advances. On clear and sunny days the scenery is strange and imposing. The dark-red earth is prolonged half-way up the tree-trunks by the ascending and descending galleries of the termite: contrasting with this peculiarly African tint, the foliage, mostly confined to the upper branches, is of a tender and lively green, whose open fret-work admits from above the vivid blue or the golden yellow of an unclouded sky. In the basins where water is nearer the surface, and upon the banks of water-courses and rivulets, the sweet and fertile earth produces a rich vegetation, and a gigantic growth of timber, which distinguishes this region from others further west. Usagara is peculiarly the land of jungle-flowers, and fruits, whose characteristic is a pleasant acidity, a provision of nature in climates where antiseptics and correctives to bile are almost necessaries of life. They are abundant, but, being uncultivated, the fleshy parts are undeveloped. In the plains, the air, heavy with the delicious perfume of the jasmine (_Jasminum Abyssinicum?_), with the strong odour of a kind of sage (_Salvia Africana_, or _Abyssinica_?), and with the fragrant exhalations of the mimosa-flowers, which hang like golden balls from the green clad boughs, forms a most enjoyable contrast to the fetid exhalations of the Great Dismal Swamps of the lowlands. The tamarind, everywhere growing wild, is a gigantic tree. The Myombo, the Mfu’u, the Ndábi, and the Mayágeá, a spreading tree with a large fleshy red flower, and gourds about eighteen inches long and hanging by slender cords, are of unusual dimensions; the calabash is converted into a hut; and the sycomore, whose favourite habitat is the lower counterslope of Usagara, is capable of shading a regiment. On the steep hill-sides, which here and there display signs of cultivation and clearings of green or sunburnt grass, grow parachute-shaped mimosas, with tall and slender trunks, and crowned by domes of verdure, rising in tiers one above the other, like umbrellas in a crowd.

The plains, basins, and steps, or facets of table-land found at every elevation, are fertilised by a stripe-work of streams, runnels, and burns, which anastomosing in a single channel, flow off into the main drain of the country. Cultivation is found in patches isolated by thick belts of thorny jungle, and the villages are few and rarely visited. As usual in hilly countries, they are built upon high ridges and the slopes of cones, for rapid drainage after rain, a purer air and fewer mosquitoes, and, perhaps, protection from kidnappers. The country people bring down their supplies of grain and pulse for caravans. There is some delay and difficulty on the first day of arrival at a station, and provisions for a party exceeding a hundred men are not to be depended upon after the third or fourth marketing, when the people have exhausted their stores. Fearing the thievish disposition of the Wasagara, who will attempt even to snatch away a cloth from a sleeping man, travellers rarely lodge near the settlements. Kraals of thorn, capacious circles enclosing straw boothies, are found at every march, and, when burned or destroyed by accident, they are rebuilt before the bivouac. The roads, as usual in East Africa, are tracks trodden down by caravans and cattle, and the water-course is ever the favourite Pass. Many of the ascents and descents are so proclivitous that donkeys must be relieved of their loads; and in fording the sluggish streams, where no grass forms a causeway over the soft, viscid mire, the animals sink almost to the knees. The steepest paths are those in the upper regions; in the lower, though the inclines are often severe, they are generally longer, and consequently easier. At the foot of each hill there is either a mud or a water-course dividing it from its neighbour. These obstacles greatly reduce the direct distance of the day’s march.

The mountains are well supplied with water, which tastes sweet after the brackish produce of the maritime valley, and good when not rendered soft and slimy by lying long on rushy beds. Upon the middle inclines the burns and runnels of the upper heights form terraces of considerable extent, and of a picturesque aspect. The wide and open sole, filled with the whitest and cleanest sand, and retaining pools of fresh clear water, or shallow wells, is edged by low steep ledges of a dull red clay, lined with glorious patriarchs of the forest, and often in the bed is a thickly wooded branch or shoal-islet, at whose upper extremity heavy driftwood, arrested by the gnarled mimosa-clumps, and the wall of shrubs, attests the violence of the rufous-tinted bore of waves with which a few showers fill the broadest courses. Lower down the channels which convey to the plains the surplus drainage of the mountains are heaps and sheets of granite, with long reaches of rough gravel; their stony walls, overrun with vegetation, tower high on either hand, and the excess of inclination produces after heavy rains torrents like avalanches, which cut their way deep into the lower plains. During the dry season, water is drawn from pits sunk from a few inches to 20 feet in the re-entering angles of the beds. Fed by the percolations of the soil, they unite the purity of springs with the abundance of rain-supplies,--a comfort fully appreciated by down-caravans after the frequent tirikeza, or droughty afternoon-marches in the western regions.

The versant of the mountains varies. In the seaward and the central sections streams flow eastward, and swell the Kingani and other rivers. The southern hills discharge their waters south and south-west through the Maroro River, and various smaller tributaries, into the “Rwaha,” which is the proper name for the upper course of the Rufiji. In the lateral plains between the ridges, and in the hill-girt basins, stagnant pools, which even during the Masika, or rainy season, inundate, but will not flow, repose upon beds of porous black earth, and engendering, by their profuse herbage of reeds and rush-like grass, with the luxuriant crops produced by artificial irrigation, a malarious atmosphere, cause a degradation in the people.

The climate of Usagara is cold and damp. It has two distinct varieties, the upper regions being salubrious, as the lower are unwholesome. In the sub-ranges heavy exhalations are emitted by the decayed vegetation, the nights are raw, the mornings chilly and misty, and the days are bright and hot. In the higher levels, near the sources of the Mukondokwa River, the climate suggests the idea of the Mahabaleshwar and the Neilgherry Hills in Western India. Compared with Uzaramo or Unyamwezi, these mountains are a sanatorium, and should Europeans ever settle in Eastern Africa as merchants or missionaries, here they might reside until acclimatised for the interior. The east wind, a local deflection of the south-east trade, laden with the moisture of the Atlantic and the Indian Oceans, and collecting the evaporation of the valley, impinges upon the seaward slope, where, ascending, and relieved from atmospheric pressure, it is condensed by a colder temperature; hence the frequent precipitations of heavy rain, and the banks and sheets of morning-cloud which veil the tree-clad peaks of the highest gradients. As the sun waxes hot, the atmosphere acquires a greater capacity for carrying water; and the results are a milky mist in the basins, and in the upper hills a wonderful clearness broken only by the thin cirri of the higher atmosphere. After sunset, again, the gradual cooling of the air causes the deposit of a copious dew, which renders the nights peculiarly pleasant to a European. The diurnal sea-breeze, felt in the slope, is unknown in the counterslope of the mountains, where, indeed, the climate is much inferior to that of the central and eastern heights. As in the Sawalik Hills, and the sub-ranges of the Himalayas, the sun is burning hot during the dry season, and in the rains there is either a storm of thunder and lightning, wind and rain, or a stillness deep and depressing, with occasional gusts whose distinct moaning shows the highly electrical state of the atmosphere. The Masika, here commencing in early January, lasts three months, when the normal easterly winds shift to the north and the north-west. The Vuli, confined to the eastern slopes, occurs in August, and, as on the plains, frequent showers fall between the vernal and the autumnal rains.

The people of Usagara suffer in the lower regions from severe ulcerations, from cutaneous disorders, and from other ailments of the plain. Higher up they are healthier, though by no means free from pleurisy, pneumonia, and dysentery. Fever is common; it is more acute in the range of swamps and decomposed herbage, and is milder in the well-ventilated cols and on the hill-sides. The type is rather a violent bilious attack, accompanied by remittent febrile symptoms, than a regular fever. It begins with cold and hot fits, followed by a copious perspiration, and sometimes inducing delirium; it lasts as a quotidian or a tertian from four to seven days; and though the attacks are slight, they are followed by great debility, want of appetite, of sleep, and of energy. This fever is greatly exacerbated by exposure and fatigue, and it seldom fails to leave behind it a legacy of cerebral or visceral disease.

The mountains of Usagara are traversed from east to west by two main lines; the Mukondokwa on the northern and the Kiringawana on the southern line. The former was closed until 1856 by a chronic famine, the result of such a neighbourhood as the Wazegura and the people of Whinde on the east, the Wahumba and the Wamasai northwards, and the Warori on the south-west. In 1858 the mountaineers, after murdering by the vilest treachery a young Arab trader, Salim bin Nasir, of the Bu Saidi, or the royal family of Zanzibar, attempted to plunder a large mixed caravan of Wanyamwezi and Wasawahili, numbering 700 or 800 guns, commanded by a stout fellow, Abdullah bin Nasib, called by the Africans “Kisesa,” who carried off the cattle, burned the villages, and laid waste the whole of the Rubeho or western chain.

The clans now tenanting these East African ghauts are the Wasagara,--with their chief sub-tribe the Wakwivi,--and the Wahehe; the latter a small body inhabiting the south-western corner, and extending into the plains below.

The limits of the Wasagara have already been laid down by the names of the plundering tribes that surround them. These mountaineers, though a noisy and riotous race, are not overblessed with courage: they will lurk in the jungle with bows and arrows to surprise a stray porter; but they seem ever to be awaiting an attack--the best receipt for inviting it. In the higher slopes they are fine, tall and sturdy men; in the low lands they appear as degraded as the Wak’hutu. They are a more bearded race than any other upon this line of East Africa, and, probably from extensive intercourse with the Wamrima, most of them understand the language of the coast. The women are remarkable for a splendid development of limb, whilst the bosom is lax and pendent.

The Wasagara display great varieties of complexion, some being almost black, whilst the others are chocolate-coloured. This difference cannot be accounted for by the mere effects of climate--level and temperature. Some shave the head; others wear the Arab’s shushah, a kind of skull-cap growth, extending more or less from the poll. Amongst them is seen, for the first time on this line, the classical coiffure of ancient Egypt. The hair, allowed to attain its fullest length, is twisted into a multitude of the thinnest ringlets, each composed of two thin lengths wound together; the wiry stiffness of the curls keeps them distinct and in position. Behind, a curtain of pigtails hangs down to the nape; in front the hair is either combed off the forehead, or it is brought over the brow and trimmed short. No head-dress has a wilder nor a more characteristically African appearance than this, especially when, smeared with a pomatum of micaceous ochre, and decorated with beads, brass balls, and similar ornaments, it waves and rattles with every motion of the head. Young men and warriors adorn their locks with the feathers of vultures, ostriches, and a variety of bright-plumed jays, and some tribes twist each ringlet with a string of reddish fibre. It is seldom combed out, the operation requiring for a head of thick hair the hard work of a whole day; it is not, therefore, surprising that the pediculus swarms through the land. None but the chiefs wear caps. Both sexes distend the ear-lobe; a hole is bored with a needle or a thorn, it is enlarged by inserting bits of cane, wood, or quills, increasing the latter to the number of twenty, and it is kept open by a disk of brass, ivory, wood, or gum, a roll of leaf or a betel-nut; thus deformed it serves for a variety of purposes apparently foreign to the member; it often carries a cane snuff-box, sometimes a goat’s-horn pierced for a fife, and other small valuables. When empty, especially in old age, it depends in a deformed loop to the shoulders. The peculiar mark of the tribe is a number of confused little cuts between the ears and the eyebrows. Some men, especially in the eastern parts of the mountains, chip the teeth to points.

The dress of the Wasagara is a shukkah or loin-cloth, 6 feet long, passed round the waist in a single fold,--otherwise walking would be difficult--drawn tight behind, and with the fore extremities gathered up, and tucked in over the stomach, where it is sometimes supported by a girdle of cord, leather, or brass wire: it is, in fact, the Arab’s “uzár.” On journeys it is purposely made short and scanty for convenience of running. The material is sometimes indigo-dyed, at other times unbleached cotton, which the Wasagara stain a dull yellow. Cloth, however, is the clothing of the wealthy. The poor content themselves with the calabash-“campestre” or kilt, and with the softened skins of sheep and goats. It is curious that in East Africa, where these articles have from time immemorial been the national dress, and where amongst some tribes hides form the house, that the people have neither invented nor borrowed the principles of rude tanning, even with mimosa-bark, an art so well known to most tribes of barbarians. Immediately after flaying, the stretched skin is pegged, to prevent shrinking, inside upwards, in the sun, and it is not removed till thoroughly cleansed and dried. The many little holes in the margin give it the semblance of ornamentation, and sometimes the hair is scraped off, leaving a fringe two or three inches broad around the edge: the legs and tail of the animal are favourite appendages with “dressy gentlemen.” These skins are afterwards softened by trampling, and they are vigorously pounded with clubs: after a few days’ wear, dirt and grease have almost done the duty of tanning. The garb is tied over either shoulder by a bit of cord or simply by knotting the corners; it therefore leaves one side of the body bare, and, being loose and ungirt, it is at the mercy of every wind. On journeys it is doffed during rain, and placed between the burden and the shoulder, so that, arrived at the encamping ground, the delicate traveller may have a “dry shirt.”

Women of the wealthier classes wear a tobe, or double-length shukkah, tightly drawn under the arms, so as to depress whilst it veils the bosom, and tucked in at either side. Dark stuffs, indigo-dyed and Arab checks, are preferred to plain white for the usual reasons. The dress of the general is a short but decorous jupe of greasy skin, and a similar covering for the bosom, open behind, and extending in front from the neck to the middle of the body: the child is carried in another skin upon the back. The poorest classes of both sexes are indifferently attired in the narrow kilt of bark-fibre, usually made in the maritime countries from the ukhindu or brab tree; in the interior from the calabash. The children wear an apron of thin twine, like the Nubian thong-garments. Where beads abound, the shagele, a small square napkin of these ornaments strung upon thread, is fastened round the waist by a string or a line of beads. There are many fanciful modifications of it: some children wear a screen of tin plates, each the size of a man’s finger: most of the very juniors, however, are simply attired in a cord, with or without beads, round the waist.

The ornaments of the Wasagara are the normal beads and wire, and their weight is the test of wealth and respectability. A fillet of blue and white beads is bound round the head, and beads,--more beads,--appear upon the neck, the arms, and the ankles. The kitindi, or coil of thick brass wire, extends from the elbow to the wrist; others wear little chains or thick bangles of copper, brass, or zinc, and those who can afford it twist a few circles of brass wire under the knee. The arms of the men are bows and arrows, the latter unpoisoned, but armed with cruelly-barbed heads, and spines like fish-bones, cut out in the long iron shaft which projects from the wood. Their spears and assegais are made from the old hoes which are brought down by the Wanyamwezi caravans; the ferule is thin, and it is attached to the shaft by a cylinder of leather from a cow’s tail, drawn over the iron, and allowed to shrink at its junction with the wood: some assegais have a central swell in the shaft, probably to admit of their being used in striking like the rungu or knobstick. Men seldom leave the house without a billhook of peculiar shape--a narrow sharp blade, ending in a right angle, and fixed in a wooden handle, with a projection rising above the blade. The shield is rarely found on this line of East Africa. In Usagara it is from three to four feet in length by one to two feet in breadth, composed of two parallel belts of hardened skin. The material is pegged out to stretch and dry, carefully cleaned, sometimes doubled, sewn together with a thin thong longitudinally, and stained black down one side, and red down the other. A stout lath is fastened lengthwise as a stiffener to the shield, and a central bulge is made in the hide, enabling the hand to grasp the wood. The favourite materials are the spoils of the elephant, the rhinoceros, and the giraffe; the common shields are of bull’s-hide, and the hair is generally left upon the outside as an ornament, with attachments of zebra and cows’ tails. It is a flimsy article, little better than a “wisp of fern or a herring-net” against an English “clothyard:” it suffices, however, for defence against the puny cane-arrows of the African archer.

As a rule, each of these villages has its headman, who owns, however, an imperfect allegiance to the Mutwa or district chief, whom the Arabs call “sultan.” The Mgosi is his wazir, or favourite councillor, and the elders or headmen of settlements collectively are Wabáhá. Their principal distinction is the right to wear a fez, or a Surat cap, and the kizbáo, a sleeveless waistcoat. They derive a certain amount of revenue by trafficking in slaves: consequently many of the Wasagara find their way into the market of Zanzibar. Moreover, the game-laws as regards elephants are here strictly in favour of the Sultan. An animal found dead in his district, though wounded in another, becomes his property on condition of his satisfying his officials with small presents of cloth and beads: the flesh is feasted upon by the tribe, and the ivory is sold to travelling traders.

The Wahehe, situated between the Wasagara and Wagogo, partake a little of the appearance of both. They are a plain race, but stout and well grown. Though to appearance hearty and good-humoured, they are determined pilferers: they have more than once attacked caravans, and only the Warori have prevented them from cutting off the road to Ugogo. During the return of the Expedition in 1858 they took occasion to drive off unseen a flock of goats; and at night no man, unless encamped in a strong kraal, was safe from their attempts to snatch his goods. On one occasion, being caught in flagrant delict, they were compelled to restore their plunder, with an equivalent as an indemnity. They are on bad terms with all their neighbours, and they unite under their chief Sultan Bumbumu.

The Wahehe enlarge their ears like the Wagogo, they chip the two upper incisors, and they burn beauty-spots in their forearms. Some men extract three or four of the lower incisors: whenever an individual without these teeth is seen in Ugogo he is at once known as a Mhehe. For distinctive mark they make two cicatrised incisions on both cheeks from the zygomata to the angles of the mouth. They dress like the Wagogo, but they have less cloth than skins. The married women usually wear a jupe, in shape recalling the old swallow-tailed coat of Europe, with kitindi, or coil armlets of brass or iron wire on both forearms and above the elbows. Unmarried girls amongst the Wahehe are known by their peculiar attire, a long strip of cloth, like the Indian “languti or T-bandage,” but descending to the knees, and attached to waistbelts of large white or yellow porcelain or blue glass beads. Over this is tied a kilt of calabash fibre, a few inches deep. The men wear thick girdles of brass wire, neatly wound round a small cord. Besides the arms described amongst the Wasagara, the Wahehe carry “sime,” or double-edged knives, from one to two feet long, broadening out from the haft, and rounded off to a blunt point at the end. The handle is cut into raised rings for security of grip, and, when in sheath, half the blade appears outside its rude leathern scabbard. The Tembe, or villages of the Wahehe, are small, ragged, and low, probably to facilitate escape from attack. They do business in slaves, and have large flocks and herds, which are, however, often thinned by the Warori, whom the Wahehe dare not resist in the field.

CHAP. VIII.

WE SUCCEED IN TRAVERSING UGOGO.

Ugogo, the reader may remember, was the ultimate period applied to the prospects of the Exploration by the worthy Mr. Rush Ramji, in conversation with the respectable Ladha Damha, Collector of Customs, Zanzibar.

I halted three days at Ugogi to recruit the party and to lay in rations for four long desert marches. Apparently there was an abundance of provisions, but the people at first declined to part with their grain and cattle even at exorbitant prices, and the Baloch complained of “cleanness of teeth.” I was visited by Ngoma Mroma, _alias_ Sultan Makande, a diwan or headman, from Ugogo, here settled as chief, and well known on the eastern seaboard: he came to offer his good services. But he talked like an idiot, he begged for every article that met his eye: and he wished me--palpably for his own benefit--to follow the most northerly of the three routes leading to Unyamwezi, upon which there were not less than eight “sultans” described by Kidogo as being “one hungrier than the other.” At last, an elephant having been found dead within his limits, he disappeared, much to my relief, for the purpose of enjoying a gorge of elephant-beef.

Ugogi is the half-way district between the coast and Unyanyembe, and it is usually made by up-caravans at the end of the second month. The people of this “no man’s land” are a mongrel race: the Wasagara claim the ground, but they have admitted as settlers many Wahehe and Wagogo, the latter for the most part men who have left their country for their country’s good. The plains are rich in grain, and the hills in cattle, when not harried, as they had been, a little before our arrival, by the Warori. The inhabitants sometimes offer for sale milk and honey, eggs and ghee, but--only the civilised rogue can improve by adulteration--the milk falls like water off the finger, the honey is in the red stage of fermentation, of the eggs there are few without the rude beginnings of a chicken, and the ghee, from long keeping, is sweet above and bitter below. The country still contains game, kanga, or guinea-fowls, in abundance, the ocelot, a hyrax like the coney of the Somali country, and the beautiful “silver jackal.” The elephant and the giraffe are frequently killed on the plains. The giraffe is called by the Arabs Jamal el Wahshí, a translation of the Kisawahili Ngamia ya Muytu, “Camel of the Wild,” and throughout the interior Tiga or Twiga. Their sign is often seen in the uncultivated parts of the country; but they wander far, and they are rarely found except by accident; the hides are converted into shields and saddle-bags, the long tufty tails into “chauri,” or fly-flappers, and the flesh is a favourite food. At Ugogi, however, game has suffered from the frequent haltings of caravans, and from the carnivorous propensities of the people, who, huntsmen all, leave their prey no chance against their nets and arrows, their pitfalls and their packs of yelping curs.