Chapter XII (10)

The Warori extend from the western frontier of the Wahehe, about forty marches along principally the northern bank of the Rwaha River, to the meridian of Eastern Unyanyembe. They are a semi-pastoral tribe, continually at war with their neighbours. They never sell their own people, but attack the Wabena, the Wakimbu, the Wahehe, the Wakonongo, and the races about Unyangwira, and drive their captives to the sea, or dispose of them to the slavers in Usagara. The price is of course cheap; a male adult is worth from two to six shukkah merkani. Some years ago a large plundering party, under their chief Mbangera, attacked Sultan Kalala of the Wasukuma; they were, however, defeated, with the loss of their leader, by Kafrira of Kivira, the son-in-law of Kalala. They also ravaged Unyanyembe, and compelled the people to take refuge on the summit of a natural rock-fortress between Kazeh and Yombo, and they have more than once menaced the dominions of Fundikira. Those mighty boasters the Wagogo hold the Warori in awe; as the Arabs say, they shrink small as a cubit before foes fiercer than themselves. The Warori have wasted the lands of Uhehe and Unyangwira, and have dispersed the Wakimbu and the Wamia tribes. They have closed the main-road from the seaboard by exorbitant blackmail and charges for water, and about five years ago they murdered two coast Arab traders from Mbuamaji. Since their late defeat by the Watuta, they have been comparatively quiet. When the E. African Expedition, however, entered the country they had just distinguished themselves by driving the herds from Ugogi, and thus prevented any entrance into their country from that district. Like the pastoral races generally of this portion of the peninsula, the object of their raids is cattle: when a herd falls into their hands, they fly at the beasts like hyænas, pierce them with their assegais, hack off huge slices, and devour the meat raw.

The Warori are small and shrivelled black savages. Their diminutive size is doubtless the effect of scanty food, continued through many generations: the Sultans, however, are a peculiarly fine large race of men. The slave-specimens observed had no distinguishing mark on the teeth; in all cases, however, two short lines were tattooed across the hollow of the temples. The male dress is a cloak of strung beads, weighing ten or twelve pounds, and covering the shoulders like a European cape. Some wind a large girdle of the same material round the waist. The women wear a bead-kilt extending to the knees, or, if unable to afford it, a wrapper of skin. The favourite weapon is a light, thin, and pliable assegai; they carry a sheath of about a dozen, and throw them with great force and accuracy. The bow is unknown. They usually press to close quarters, each man armed with a long heavy spear. Iron is procured in considerable quantities both in Ubena and Urori. The habitations are said to be large Tembe, capable of containing 400 to 500 souls. The principal articles of diet are milk, meat, and especially fattened dog’s flesh--of which the chiefs are inordinately fond,--maize, holcus, and millet. Rice is not grown in these arid districts. They manage their intoxication by means of pombe made of grain and the bhang, which is smoked in gourd-pipes; they also mix the cannabis with their vegetable food. The Warori are celebrated for power of abstinence; they will march, it is said, six days without eating, and they require to drink but once in the twenty-four hours. In one point they resemble the Bedouins of Arabia: the chief will entertain his guests hospitably as long as they remain in his village, but he will plunder them the moment they leave it.

On the 19th January the expected down-caravan of Wanyamwezi arrived, and I found no difficulty in completing our carriage--a fair proof, be it remarked, that I had not lost the confidence of the people. The Mtongi, however, was, or perhaps pretended to be, ill; we were, therefore, delayed for another day in a place which had no charms for us.

The 21st January enabled us to bid adieu to Zungomero and merrily to take the footpath way. We made Konduchi on the 3rd February, after twelve marches, which were accomplished in fifteen days. There was little of interest or adventure in this return-line, of which the nine first stations had already been visited and described. As the Yegea mud, near Dut’humi, was throat-deep, we crossed it lower down: it was still a weary trudge of several miles through thick slabby mire, which admitted a man to his knees. In places, after toiling under a sickly sun, we crept under the tunnels of thick jungle-growth veiling the Mgazi and other streams; the dank and fetid cold caused a deadly sensation of faintness, which was only relieved by a glass of æther-sherbet, a pipe or two of the strongest tobacco, and half an hour’s repose. By degrees it was found necessary to abandon the greater part of the remaining outfit and the luggage: the Wanyamwezi, as they neared their destination, became even less manageable than before, and the sons of Ramji now seemed to consider their toils at an end. On the 25th January we forded the cold, strong, yellow stream of the Mgeta, whose sandy bed had engulfed my elephant-gun, and we entered with steady hearts the formerly dreaded Uzaramo. The 27th January saw us pass safely by the village where M. Maizan came to an untimely end. On that day Ramazan and Salman, children of Said bin Salim, returned from Zanzibar Island, bringing letters, clothing, and provisions for their master, who, by way of small revenge, had despatched them secretly from Zungomero. On the 28th January we reached the Makutaniro or anastomosis of the Kaole and Mbuamaji roads, where on our ingress the Wazaramo had barred passage in force. No one now ventured to dispute the way with well-armed paupers. That evening, however, the Mtongi indulged his men with “maneno,” a harangue. Reports about fatal skirmishes between the Wazaramo and a caravan of Wanyamwezi that had preceded us had flown about the camp; consequently the Mtongi recommended prudence. “There would be danger to-morrow--a place of ambuscade--the porters must not rise and be off too early nor too late--they must not hasten on, nor lag behind--they had with them Wazungu, and in case of accidents they would lose their name!” The last sentence was frequently repeated with ever increasing emphasis, and each period of the discourse was marked by a general murmur, denoting attention.

As I have said, there was no danger. Yet on the next day a report arose that we were to be attacked in a dense thicket--where no archer, be it observed, could bend his bow--a little beyond the junction of the Mbuamaji road with that of Konduchi, our destination. In the afternoon Said bin Salim, with important countenance, entered my tent and disclosed to me the doleful tidings. The road was cut off. He knew it. A great friend of his--a slave--had told him so. He remembered warning me that such was the case five days ago. I must either delay till an escort could be summoned from the coast, or--I must fee a chief to precede me and to reason with the enemy. It was in vain to storm, I feared that real obstacles might be placed by the timid and wily little man in our way, and I consented most unwillingly to pay two coloured cloths, and one ditto of blue-cotton, as hire to guard that appeared in the shape of four clothless varlets, that left us after the first quarter of an hour. The Baloch, headed by the Jemadar, knowing that all was safe, distinguished themselves on that night, for the first time in eighteen months, by uttering the shouts which prove that the Oriental soldier is doing “Zam,” _i.e._ is on the _qui vive_. When requested not to make so much noise they grumbled that it was for our sake, not for theirs.

On the 30th January our natives of Zanzibar screamed with delight at the sight of the mango-tree, and pointed out to one another, as they appeared in succession, the old familiar fruits, jacks and pine-apples, limes and cocoes. On the 2nd February we greeted, with doffed caps and with three times three and one more, as Britons will do on such occasions, the kindly smiling face of our father Neptune as he lay basking in the sunbeams between earth and air. Finally, the 3rd February 1859 saw us winding through the poles decorated with skulls--they now grin in the Royal College of Surgeons, London--a negro Temple-bar which pointed out the way into the little maritime village of Konduchi.

Our entrance was attended with the usual ceremony, now familiar to the reader: the warmen danced, shot, and shouted, a rabble of adults, youths, and boys crowded upon us, the fair sex lulliloo’d with vigour, and a general procession conducted their strangers to the hut swept, cleaned, and garnished for us by old Premji, the principal Banyan of the head-quarter village, and there stared and laughed till they could stare and laugh no more.

On the evening of the same day an opportunity offered of transferring the Jemadar, the Baloch, and my _bête noire_, Kidogo, to their homes in Zanzibar Island, which lies within sight of Konduchi: as may be imagined, I readily availed myself of it. After begging powder and _et cæteras_ to the last, the monocular insisted upon kissing my hand, and departed weeping bitterly with the agony of parting. By the same boat I sent a few lines to H. M. consul, Zanzibar, enclosing a list of necessaries, and requesting that a Battela, or coasting-craft, might be hired, provisioned, and despatched without delay, as I purposed to explore the Delta and the unknown course of the Rufiji River. In due time Said bin Salim and his “children,” including the fair Halimah and Zawada--the latter was liberally rewarded by me for services rendered to my companion--and shortly afterwards the sons of Ramji, or rather the few who had not deserted or lagged behind, were returned to their master, and were, I doubt not, received with all the kindness which their bad conduct deserved.

We were detained at Konduchi for six days between the 3rd and 10th February. There is nothing interesting in this little African village port: instead of describing it, I will enter into a few details concerning African matters of more general importance.

CHAP. XVIII.

VILLAGE LIFE IN EAST AFRICA.

The assertion may startle the reader’s preconceived opinions concerning the savage state of Central Africa and the wretched condition of the slave races, negroid and negro; but is not less true that the African is in these regions superior in comforts, better dressed, fed, and lodged, and less worked than the unhappy Ryot of British India. His condition, where the slave trade is slack, may, indeed, be compared advantageously with that of the peasantry in some of the richest of European countries.

The African rises with the dawn from his couch of cow’s hide. The hut is cool and comfortable during the day, but the barred door impeding ventilation at night causes it to be close and disagreeable. The hour before sunrise being the coldest time, he usually kindles a fire, and addresses himself to his constant companion, the pipe. When the sun becomes sufficiently powerful, he removes the reed-screen from the entrance, and issues forth to bask in the morning-beams. The villages are populous, and the houses touching one another enable the occupants, when squatting outside and fronting the central square, to chat and chatter without moving. About 7 A.M., when the dew has partially disappeared from the grass, the elder boys drive the flocks and herds to pasture with loud shouts and sounding applications of the quarter-staff. They return only when the sun is sinking behind the western horizon. At 8 P.M. those who have provisions at home enter the hut to refection with ugali or holcus-porridge; those who have not, join a friend. Pombe, when procurable, is drunk from the earliest dawn.

After breaking his fast the African repairs, pipe in hand, to the Iwánzá--the village “public,” previously described. Here, in the society of his own sex, he will spend the greater part of the day, talking and laughing, smoking, or torpid with sleep. Occasionally he sits down to play. As with barbarians generally, gambling in him is a passion. The normal game is our “heads and tails,” its implement a flat stone, a rough circle of tin, or the bottom of a broken pot. The more civilised have learned the “bao” of the coast, a kind of “tables,” with counters and cups hollowed in a solid plank. Many of the Wanyamwezi have been compelled by this indulgence to sell themselves into slavery: after playing through their property, they even stake their aged mothers against the equivalent of an old lady in these lands,--a cow or a pair of goats. As may be imagined, squabbles are perpetual; they are almost always, however, settled amongst fellow-villagers with bloodless weapons. Others, instead of gambling, seek some employment which, working the hands and leaving the rest of the body and the mind at ease, is ever a favourite with the Asiatic and the African; they whittle wood, pierce and wire their pipe-sticks--an art in which all are adepts--shave one another’s heads, pluck out their beards, eyebrows, and eyelashes, and prepare and polish their weapons.

At about 1 P.M. the African, unless otherwise employed, returns to his hut to eat the most substantial and the last meal of the day, which has been cooked by his women. Eminently gregarious, however, he often prefers the Iwánzá as a dining-room, where his male children, relatives, and friends meet during the most important hour of the twenty-four. With the savage and the barbarian food is the all-in-all of life:--food is his thought by day,--food is his dream by night. The civilised European, who never knows hunger or thirst without the instant means of gratifying every whim of appetite, can hardly conceive the extent to which his wild brother’s soul is swayed by stomach; he can scarcely comprehend the state of mental absorption in which the ravenous human animal broods over the carcase of an old goat, the delight which he takes in superintending every part of the cooking process, and the jealous eye with which he regards all who live better than himself.

The principal articles of diet are fish and flesh, grain and vegetables; the luxuries are milk and butter, honey, and a few fruits, as bananas and Guinea-palm dates; and the inebrients are pombe or millet-beer, toddy, and mawa or plantain-wine.

Fish is found in the lakes and in the many rivers of this well-watered land; it is despised by those who can afford flesh, but it is a “godsend” to travellers, to slaves, and to the poor. Meat is the diet most prized; it is, however, a luxury beyond the reach of peasantry, except when they can pick up the orts of the chiefs. The Arabs assert that in these latitudes vegetables cause heartburn and acidity, and that animal food is the most digestible. The Africans seem to have made the same discovery: a man who can afford it almost confines himself to flesh, and he considers fat the essential element of good living. The crave for meat is satisfied by eating almost every description of living thing, clean or unclean; as a rule, however, the East African prefers beef, which strangers find flatulent and heating. Like most people, they reject game when they can command the flesh of tame beasts. Next to the bullock the goat is preferred in the interior; as indeed it is by the Arabs of Zanzibar Island; whereas those of Oman and of Western Arabia abandon it to the Bedouins. In this part of Africa the cheapest and vilest meat is mutton, and its appearance--pale, soft, and braxy--justifies the prejudice against it. Of late years it has become the fashion to eat poultry and pigeons; eggs, however, are still avoided. In the absence of history and tradition, it is difficult to decide whether this aversion to eggs arises from an imported or an indigenous prejudice. The mundane egg of Hindoo mythology probably typified the physiological dogma “omne vivum ex ovo,” and the mystic disciples would avoid it as representing the principle of life. In remote ages the prejudice may have extended to Africa, although the idea which gave birth to it was not familiar to the African mind. Of wild flesh, the favourite is that of the zebra; it is smoked or jerked, despite which it retains a most savoury flavour. Of the antelopes a few are deliciously tender and succulent; the greater part are black, coarse, and indigestible. One of the inducements for an African to travel is to afford himself more meat than at home. His fondness for the article conquers at times even his habitual improvidence. He preserves it by placing large lumps upon a little platform of green reeds, erected upon uprights about eighteen inches high, and by smoking it with a slow fire. Thus prepared, and with the addition of a little salt, the provision will last for several days, and the porters will not object to increase their loads by three or four pounds of the article, disposed upon a long stick like gigantic kababs. They also jerk their stores by exposing the meat upon a rope, or spread upon a flat stone, for two or three days in the sun; it loses a considerable portion of nutriment, but it packs into a conveniently small compass. This jerked meat, when dried, broken into small pieces, and stored in gourds or in pots full of clarified and melted butter, forms the celebrated travelling provision in the East called kavurmeh: it is eaten as a relish with rice and other boiled grains. When meat is not attainable and good water is scarce, the African severs one of the jugulars of a bullock and fastens upon it like a leech. This custom is common in Karagwah and the other northern kingdoms, and some tribes, like the Wanyika, near Mombasah, churn the blood with milk.

The daily food of the poor is grain, generally holcus, maize, or bajri (panicum); wheat is confined to the Arabs, and rice grows locally, as in the Indian peninsula. The inner Africans, like the semi-civilised Arabs of Zanzibar, the Wasawahili, and the Wamrima, ignore the simple art of leavening bread by acidulated whey, sour bean-paste, and similar contrivances universally practised in Oman. Even the rude Indian chapati or scone is too artificial for them, and they have not learned to toast grain. Upon journeys the African boils his holcus unhusked in an earthen basin, drinks the water, and devours the grain, which in this state is called masango; at home he is more particular. The holcus is either rubbed upon a stone--the mill being wholly unknown--or pounded with a little water in a huge wooden mortar; when reduced to a coarse powder, it is thrown into an earthen pot containing boiling water sufficient to be absorbed by the flour; a little salt, when procurable, is added; and after a few stirrings with a ladle, or rather with a broad and flat-ended stick, till thoroughly saturated, the thick mass is transferred into a porous basket, which allows the extra moisture to leak out. Such is the ugali, or porridge, the staff of life in East Africa.

During the rains vegetables are common in the more fertile parts of East Africa; they are within reach of the poorest cultivator. Some varieties, especially the sweet potato and the mushroom, are sliced and sun-dried to preserve them through the year. During the barren summer they are boiled into a kind of broth.

Milk is held in high esteem by all tribes, and some live upon it almost exclusively during the rains, when cattle find plentiful pasture. It is consumed in three forms--“mabichi,” when drunk fresh; or converted into mabivu (butter-milk), the rubb of Arabs; or in the shape of mtindi (curded milk), the laban of Arabia, and the Indian dahi. These Africans ignore the dudh-pinda, or ball of fresh-milk boiled down to hardness by evaporation of the serum, as practised by the Indian halwaí (confectioner); the indurated sour-clot of Arabia, called by the Bedouins el igt, and by the Persians the Baloch, and the Sindhians kurut, is also unknown; and they consider cheese a miracle, and use against it their stock denunciation, the danger of bewitching cattle. The fresh produce, moreover, has few charms as a poculent amongst barbarous and milk-drinking races: the Arabs and the Portuguese in Africa avoid it after the sun is high, believing it to increase bile, and eventually to cause fever: it is certain that, however pleasant the draught may be in the cool of the morning, it is by no means so much relished during the heat of the day. On the other hand, the curded milk is everywhere a favourite on account of its cooling and thirst-quenching properties, and the people accustomed to it from infancy have for it an excessive longing. It is procurable in every village where cows are kept, whereas that newly-drawn is generally half-soured from being at once stored in the earthen pots used for curding it. These East Africans do not, however, make their dahi, like the Somal, in lumps floating upon the tartest possible serum; nor do they turn it, like the Arabs, with kid’s rennet, nor like the Baloch with the solanaceous plant called panir. The best is made, as in India, by allowing the milk to stand till it clots in a pot used for the purpose, and frequently smoked for purity. Butter-milk is procurable only in those parts of the country where the people have an abundance of cattle.

Butter is made by filling a large gourd, which acts as churn, with partially-soured milk, which is shaken to and fro: it is a poor article, thin, colourless, and tainted by being stored for two or three months, without preliminary washing, in the bark-boxes called vilindo. In the Eastern regions it is converted into ghee by simply melting over the fire: it is not boiled to expel the remnant of sour milk, impurities are not removed by skimming, and finally it becomes rancid and bitter by storing in pots and gourds which have been used for the purpose during half a generation. The Arabs attempt to do away with the nauseous taste by throwing into it when boiling a little water, with a handful of flour or of unpowdered rice. Westward of Unyamwezi butter is burned instead of oil in lamps.

The common oil in East Africa is that of the karanga, bhuiphali, or ground-nut (Arachis hypogæa): when ghee is not procurable, the Arabs eat it, like cocoa-nut oil, with beans, manioc, sweet-potato and other vegetables. A superior kind of cooking is the “uto” extracted from the ufuta, simsim or sesamum, which grows everywhere upon the coast, and extends far into the interior. The process of pressing is managed by pounding the grain dry in a huge mortar; when the oil begins to appear, a little hot water is poured in, and the mass is forcibly squeezed with huge pestles; all that floats is then ladled out into pots and gourds. The viscid chikichi (palm-oil) is found only in the vicinity of the Tanganyika Lake, although the tree grows in Zanzibar and its adjacent islets. Oil is extracted from the two varieties of the castor-plant; and, in spite of its unsavoury smell, it is extensively used as an unguent by the people. At Unyanyembe and other places where the cucumber grows almost wild, the Arabs derive from its seed an admirable salad-oil, which in flavour equals, and perhaps surpasses, the finest produce of the olive. The latter tree is unknown in East Africa to the Arabs, who speak of it with a religious respect, on account of the mention made of it in the Koran.

In East Africa every man is his own maltster; and the “Iwánzá,” or public-house of the village, is the common brewery. In some tribes, however, fermentation is the essential occupation of the women. The principal inebrient is a beer without hops, called pombe. This ποτος θειος of the negro and negroid races dates from the age of Osiris: it is the buzah of Egypt and the farther East, and the merissa of the Upper Nile, the ξιθον and xythum of the West, and the oala or boyaloa of the Kafirs and the South African races. The taste is somewhat like soured wort of the smallest description, but strangers, who at first dislike it exceedingly, are soon reconciled to it by the pleasurable sensations to which it gives rise. Without violent action, it affects the head, and produces an agreeable narcotism, followed by sound sleep and heaviness in the morning--as much liked by the barbarian, to whom inebriation is a boon, as feared by the civilised man. Being, as the Arabs say, a “cold drink,” causing hydrocele and rheumatism, it has some of the after-effects of gin, and the drunkard is readily recognised by his red and bleared eyes. When made thick with the grounds or sediment of grain, it is exceedingly nutricious. Many a gallon must be drunk by the veteran malt-worm before intoxication; and individuals of both sexes sometimes live almost entirely upon pombe. It is usually made as follows: half of the grain--holcus, panicum, or both mixed--intended for the brew is buried or soaked in water till it sprouts; it is then pounded and mixed with the other half, also reduced to flour, and sometimes with a little honey. The compound is boiled twice or thrice in huge pots, strained, when wanted clear, through a bag of matting, and allowed to ferment: after the third day it becomes as sour as vinegar. The “togwa” is a favourite drink, also made of holcus. At first it is thick and sickly, like honeyed gruel; when sour it becomes exceedingly heady. As these liquors consume a quantity of grain, they are ever expensive; the large gourdful never fetches less than two khete or strings of beads, and strangers must often pay ten khete for the luxury. Some years ago an Arab taught the Wanyamwezi to distil: they soon, however, returned to their favourite fermentation.

The use of pombe is general throughout the country: the other inebrients are local. At the island and on the coast of Zanzibar tembo, or toddy, in the West African dialects tombo, is drawn from the cocoa-tree; and in places a pernicious alcohol, called mvinyo, is extracted from it. The Wajiji and other races upon the Tanganyika Lake tap the Guinea-palm for a toddy, which, drawn in unclean pots, soon becomes acid and acrid as the Silesian wine that serves to mend the broken limbs of the poor. The use of bhang and datura-seed has already been alluded to. “Máwá,” or plantain-wine, is highly prized because it readily intoxicates. The fruit when ripe is peeled and hand-kneaded with coarse green grass, in a wide-mouthed earthen pot, till all the juice is extracted: the sweet must is then strained through a _cornet_ of plantain-leaf into a clean gourd, which is but partially stopped. To hasten fermentation a handful of toasted or pounded grain is added: after standing for two days in a warm room the wine is ready for drinking.

The East Africans ignore the sparkling berille or hydromel of Abyssinia and Harar, and the mead of the Bushman race. Yet honey abounds throughout the country, and near the villages log-hives, which from their shape are called mazinga or cannons by the people, hang from every tall and shady tree. Bees also swarm in the jungles, performing an important part in the vegetable economy by masculation or caprification, and the conveyance of pollen. Their produce is of two kinds. The cheaper resembles wasp-honey in Europe; it is found in the forest, and stored in gourds. More than half-filled with dirt and wood-bark, it affords but little wax; the liquid is thin and watery, and it has a peculiarly unpleasant flavour. The better variety, the hive-honey, is as superior to the produce of the jungle as it is inferior to that of India and of more civilised lands. It is tolerable until kept too long, and it supplies a good yellow wax, used by the Arabs to mix with tallow in the manufacture of “dips.” The best honey is sold after the rains; but the African hoards his store till it reddens, showing the first stage of fermentation: he will eat it after the second or third year, when it thins, froths, and becomes a rufous-brown fluid of unsavoury taste; and he rarely takes the trouble to remove the comb, though the Arabs set him the example of straining the honey through bags of plantain-straw or matting. Decomposition, moreover, is assisted by softening the honey over the fire to extract the wax instead of placing it in the sun. The price varies from one to three cloths for a large gourdful. When cheap, the Arabs make from it “honey-sugar:” the material, after being strained and cleaned, is stored for two or three weeks in a cool place till surface-granulation takes place; the produce resembles in taste and appearance coarse brown sugar. The “siki,” a vinegar of the country, is also made of one part honey and four of water, left for a fortnight to acetise: it is weak and insipid. Honey is the only sweetener in the country, except in the places where the sugar-cane grows, namely, the maritime and the Lakist regions. The people chew it, ignoring the simple art of extracting and inspissating the juice; nor do they, like the natives of Usumbara, convert it into an inebrient. Yet sugar attracts them like flies; they clap their hands with delight at the taste; they buy it for its weight of ivory; and if a thimbleful of the powder happen to fall upon the ground, they will eat an ounce of earth rather than lose a grain of it.

After eating, the East African invariably indulges in a long fit of torpidity, from which he awakes to pass the afternoon as he did the forenoon, chatting, playing, smoking, and chewing “sweet-earth.” Towards sunset all issue forth to enjoy the coolness: the men sit outside the Iwánzá, whilst the women and the girls, after fetching water for household wants from the well, collecting in a group upon their little stools, indulge in the pleasures of gossipred and the pipe. This hour in the more favoured parts of the country is replete with enjoyment, which even the barbarian feels, though not yet indoctrinated into æsthetics. As the hours of darkness draw nigh, the village doors are carefully closed, and, after milking his cows, each peasant retires to his hut, or passes his time squatting round the fire with his friends in the Iwánzá. He has not yet learned the art of making a wick, and of filling a bit of pottery with oil. When a light is wanted, he ignites a stick of the oleaginous mtata, or msásá-tree--a yellow, hard, close-grained, and elastic wood, with few knots, much used in making spears, bows, and walking staves--which burns for a quarter of an hour with a brilliant flame. He repairs to his hard couch before midnight, and snores with a single sleep till dawn. For thorough enjoyment, night must be spent in insensibility, as day is in inebriety; and, though an early riser, he avoids the “early to bed,” in order that he may be able to slumber through half the day.

It is evident that these barbarians lead rather a “fast” life; there are, however, two points that modify its evil consequences. The “damned distillation” is unknown, consequently they do not suffer from delirium tremens, its offspring. Their only brain-work is that necessitated by the simple wants of life, and by the unartificial style of gambling which they affect. Amongst the civilized, the peculiar state of the nervous system in the individual, and in society, the abnormal conditions induced by overcrowding in cities and towns, has engendered a cohort of dire diseases which the children of nature ignore.

Such is the African’s idle day, and thus every summer is spent. As the wintry rains draw nigh, the necessity of daily bread suggests itself. The peasants then leave their huts at 6 or 7 A.M., often without provision, which now becomes scarce, and labour till noon, or 2 P.M., when they return home, and find food prepared by the wife or the slave-girl. During the afternoon they return to work, and sometimes, when the rains are near, they are aided by the women. Towards sunset all wend homewards in a body, laden with their implements of cultivation, and singing a kind of “dulce domum,” in a simple and pleasing recitative.

When the moon shines bright the spirits of the East African are raised like the jackal’s, and a furious drumming and a droning chorus summon the maidens to come out and enjoy the spectacle of a dance. The sexes seldom perform together, but they have no objection to be gazed at by each other. Their style of saltation is remarkable only for the extreme gravity which it induces--at no other time does the East African look so serious and so full of earnest purpose. Yet with all this thoughtfulness, “poor human nature cannot dance of itself.” The dance has already been described as far as possible: as may be imagined, the African Thalia is by no means free from the reproach which caused Mohammed to taboo her to his followers.

Music is at a low ebb. Admirable timists, and no mean tunists, the people betray their incapacity for improvement by remaining contented with the simplest and the most monotonous combinations of sounds. As in everything else, so in this art, creative talent is wanting. A higher development would have produced other results; yet it is impossible not to remark the delight which they take in harmony. The fisherman will accompany his paddle, the porter his trudge, and the housewife her task of rubbing down grain, with song; and for long hours at night the peasants will sit in a ring repeating, with a zest that never flags, the same few notes, and the same unmeaning line. Their style is the recitative, broken by a full chorus, and they appear to affect the major rather than the interminable minor key of the Asiatic. Their singing also wants the strained upper notes of the cracked-voiced Indian performer, and it ignores the complicated raga and ragini or Hindu modes, which appear rather the musical expression of high mathematics than the natural language of harmony and melody.

1. Paddle in East Africa.

2. The Sange or Gourd.

3. Bellows.

4. Drum.

5. Stool.

6. The Zeze (guitar).

7. The D’hete, or Kidete.]

The instruments of the East African are all of foreign invention, imported from various regions, Madagascar, and the coast. Those principally in use are the following. The zeze, or banjo, resembles in sound the monochord Arabian rubabah, the rude ancestor of the Spanish guitar. The sounding-board is a large hollow gourd, open below; on the upper part, fastened by strings that pass through drilled holes, is a conical piece of gourd, cleft longitudinally to admit the arm or handle, which projects at a right angle. The arm is made of light wood, from 18 inches to 2 feet in length; the left-hand extremity has three frets formed by two notches, with intervals, and thus the total range is of six notes. A single string, made of “mondo,” the fibre of the mwale or raphia-palm, is tied to a knob of wood projecting from the dexter extremity of the handle, thence it passes over a bridge of bent quill, which for tuning is raised or depressed, and lastly it is secured round another knob at the end beyond the frets. Sometimes, to form a bass or drone, a second string is similarly attached along the side of the arm, whilst the treble runs along the top.

The kinanda, a prototype of the psaltery and harp, the lute and lyre, and much used by the southern races in the neighbourhood of Kilwa, is of two kinds. One is a shallow box cut out of a single plank, thirteen inches long by five or six in breadth, and about two inches in depth: eleven or twelve strings are drawn tightly over the hollow. The instrument is placed in the lap, and performed upon with both hands. The other is a small bow-guitar, with an open gourd attached to the part about the handle: sometimes the bow passes through the gourd. This instrument is held in the left hand, whilst the “tocador” strikes its single cord with a thin cane-plectrum about one foot long. As in the zeze, the gourd is often adorned with black tattoo, or bright brass tacks, disposed in various patterns, amongst which the circle and the crescent figure conspicuously. A third form of the kinanda appears to be a barbarous ancestor of the Grecian lyre, which, like the modern Nubian “kisirka,” is a lineal descendant from the Egyptian oryx-horn lute with the transverse bar. A combination of the zeze and kinanda is made by binding a dwarf hollow box with its numerous strings to the open top of a large circular gourd, which then acts as a sounding-board.

The wind-instruments are equally rude, though by no means so feeble as their rivals. The nai or sackbut of India, and the siwa, a huge bassoon of black wood, at least five feet long, are known only to the coast-people. The tribes of the interior use the d’hete or kidete, called by the Wasawahili zumari. It is literally the bucolic reed, a hollowed holcus-cane, pierced with four holes at the further end: the mouthpiece is not stopped in any way, and the instrument is played upon solely by the lips, a drone being sometimes supplied by the voice. Thus simple and ineffective, it has nevertheless a familiar sound to European ears. The barghumi is made by cutting an oblong hole, about the size of a man’s nail, within two or three inches of the tip of a koodoo, an oryx, or a goat’s horn, which, for effect and appearance, is sometimes capped with a bit of cane, whence projects a long zebra’s or giraffe’s tail. Like the det’he, it is played upon by the lips; and without any attempt at stops or keys, four or five notes may be produced. Its sound, heard from afar, especially in the deep silence of a tropical night, resembles not a little the sad, sweet music of the French _cor-de-chasse_; and when well performed upon, it might be mistaken for a regimental bugle. There are smaller varieties of the barghumi, which porters carry slung over the shoulder, and use as signals on the line of march. Another curious instrument is a gourd, a few inches in circumference, drilled with many little apertures: the breath passes through one hole, and certain notes are produced by stopping others with the fingers--its loud, shrill, and ear-piercing quavers faintly resemble the European “piccolo.” The only indigenous music of the pastoral African--the Somal, for instance--is whistling, a habit acquired in youth when tending the flocks and herds. This “Mu’unzi” is soft and dulcet; the ear, however, fails to detect in it either phrase or tune. For signals the East Africans practise the kik’horombwe, or blowing between the fore and the middle fingers with a noise like that of a railway whistle. The Wanyamwezi also blow over the edge of the hollow in a small antelope’s horn, or through an iron tube; and the Watuta are said to use metal-whistles as signals in battle.

The drum is ever the favourite instrument with the African, who uses it as the alarum of war, the promise of mirth, the token of hospitality, and the cure of diseases: without drumming his life would indeed be a blank. The largest variety, called “ngoma ku,” is the hollowed hole of a mkenga or other soft tree, with a cylindrical solid projection from the bottom, which holds it upright when planted in the ground. The instrument is from three to five feet in length with a diameter of from one to two feet: the outside is protected with a net-work of strong cord. Over the head is stretched a rough parchment made of calf’s-skin; and a cap of green hide, mounted when loose, and afterwards shrunken by exposure to fire, protects the bottom. It is vigorously beaten with the fists, and sometimes with coarse sticks. There are many local varieties of this instrument, especially the timbrel or tabret, which is about a foot long, shaped like an hour-glass or a double “darabukkah,” and provided with a head of iguana-skin. The effect of tom-toming is also produced by striking hollow gourds and similar articles. The only cymbal is the upatu, a flat-bottomed brass pot turned upside down, and tapped with a bit of wood. The “sanje,” a gourd full of pebbles, is much affected in parts of the country by women, children, and, especially, by the mganga or rain-maker; its use being that of the babe’s rattle amongst Europeans.

The insipidity of the African’s day is relieved by frequent drinking bouts, and by an occasional hunt. For the former the guests assemble at early dawn, and take their seats in a circle, dividing into knots of three or four to facilitate the circulation of the bowl. The mwandázi, or cup-bearer, goes round the assembly, giving scrupulous precedence to the chiefs and elders, who are also provided with larger vessels. The sonzo, or drinking-cup, which also serves as a travelling canteen, is made generally by the women, of a kind of grass called mávú, or of wild palm-leaf: the split stalks are neatly twisted into a fine cord, which is rolled up, beginning from the bottom, in concentric circles, each joined to its neighbour by a binding of the same material: it is sometimes stained and ornamented with red and black dyes. The shape when finished is a truncated cone, somewhat like a Turk’s fez; it measures about six inches in diameter by five in depth, and those of average size may contain a quart. This cup passes around without delay or heel-taps, and the topers stop occasionally to talk, laugh, and snuff, to chew tobacco, and to smoke bhang. The scene of sensuality lasts for three or four hours--in fact, till the pombe prepared for the occasion is exhausted,--when the carousers, with red eyes, distorted features, and the thickest of voices, stagger home to doze through the day. Perhaps in no European country are so many drunken men seen abroad as in East Africa. Women also frequently appear intoxicated; they have, however, private “pombe,” and do not drink with the men.

The East African, who can seldom afford to gratify his longing for meat by slaughtering a cow or a goat, looks eagerly forward to the end of the rains, when the grass is in a fit condition for firing; then, armed with bows and arrows, and with rungu or knobkerries, the villagers have a battue of small antelopes, hares, and birds. During the hot season also, when the waters dry up, they watch by night at the tanks and pools, and they thus secure the larger kinds of game. Elephants especially are often found dead of drought during the hot season; they are driven from the springs which are haunted by the hunters, and, according to the Arabs, they fear migrating to new seats where they would be attacked by the herds in possession. In many parts the huntsmen suspend by a cord from the trees sharpened blocks of wood, which, loosened by the animal’s foot, fall and cause a mortal wound. This “suspended spear,” sprung by a latch, has been described by a host of South African travellers. It has been sketched by Lieut. Boteler (“Narrative of a Voyage of Discovery to Africa and Arabia,” chap. iv.); and Major Monteiro (“O Muata Cazembe,” chap. v.); and described by Mr. Galton, Mr. Gordon Cumming, and Dr. Livingstone (chap. xxviii.). Throughout Ugogo and upon the maritime regions large game is caught in pitfalls, here called mtego, and in India ogi: in some places travellers run the risk of falling into these traps. The mtego is an oblong excavation like a great grave, but decreasing in breadth below the surface of the ground and it is always found single, not in pairs as in South Africa. The site generally chosen is near water, and the hole is carefully masked with thin layers of small sticks and leaves. The Indian “surrounds” and the hopo or V-shaped trap of the Bakwens are here unknown. The distribution of treasure-trove would seem to argue ancient partitions and lordships, and, in dividing the spoils of wild or tame animals, the chief claims, according to ancient right, the breast. This custom apparently borrowed by the Hebrews from Africa (Leviticus, chap. vii. 30, 31), is alluded to by almost all South-African travellers.

The elephant roams in herds throughout the country, affecting the low grounds where stagnating water produces a plentiful vegetation: with every human being its foe, and thousands living by its destruction, the animal is far from becoming scarce; indeed, the greatest number of footprints appeared near Chogwe and Tongwe, stations of Baloch garrisons close to the town of Pangani. The elephant hunt is with the African a solemn and serious undertaking. He fortifies himself with periapts and prophylactics given by the mganga, who also trains him to the use of his weapon. The elephant-spear resembles our boarding-pike rather than the light blunt arm employed in war; it is about six feet long, with a broad tapering head cut away at the shoulders, and supported by an iron neck, which is planted in a thick wooden handle, the junction being secured by a cylinder of raw hide from a cow’s tail passed over it, and shrunk on by drying: a specimen was deposited with the Royal Geographical Society. The spear is invariably guarded by a mpigi or charm, the usual two bits of wood bound together with a string or strip of skin. It is not a little curious that the East African, though born and bred a hunter, is, unlike almost all barbarians, as skill-less as an European in the art of el asr, the “spoor” or “sign.”

The hunting-party, consisting of fifteen to twenty individuals, proceeds before departure to sing and dance, to drink and drum for a consecutive week. The women form line and perambulate the village, each striking an iron jembe or hoe with a large stone, which forms an appropriate accompaniment to the howl and the vigelegele, “lullilooing,” or trills of joy. At every step the dancer sways herself elephant-like from side to side, and tosses her head backwards with a violence threatening dislocation of the atlas. The line, led by a fugle-woman by the right, who holds two jembe in one hand, but does not drum, stops facing every Arab house where beads may be expected, and performs the most hideous contortions, whirling the arms round the shoulder-socket, kneeling, and imitating the actions of various animals. The labour done, the ladies apply to their pombe, and reappear after four or five hours with a tell-tale stagger and a looseness of limb which adds a peculiar charm to their gesticulations. The day concludes with a “fackeltanz” of remarkable grotesqueness. This merrymaking is probably intended as a consolation for the penance which the elephant-hunter’s wife performs during the absence of her mate; she is expected to abstain from good food, handsome cloth, and fumigation: she must not leave the house, and for an act of infidelity the blame of failure in the hunt will fall heavily upon her. Meanwhile the men--at least as “far gone” as the women--encircle with a running jumping gait, and with the grace and science of well-trained bears, a drum or a kilindo,--the normal bark bandbox,--placed with open mouth upon the ground, and violently beaten with sticks and fists or rubbed and scraped with stones. It forms also a sounding-board for a kinanda or bow-guitar, one end of which is applied to it, whilst a shrill fife of goat’s horn gives finish and completeness to the band. Around the drum are placed several elephants’ tails, possibly designed to serve the purpose of the clay-corpse introduced into the feasts of ancient Egypt.

When thoroughly drenched with drink, the hunters set out early in the morning, carrying live brands lest fire should fail them in the jungle, and applying them to their mouths to keep out the cold air. These trampers are sometimes dangerous to stragglers from caravans, especially in countries where the robber or the murderer expects to escape with impunity. In some places hunting-huts have been erected; they are, however, seldom used when elephants are sought, as a herd once startled does not readily return to the same pasture-grounds. The great art of the African muinzi or elephant-hunter is to separate a tusker from the herd without exciting suspicion, and to form a circle round the victim. The mganga, then rising with a shout, hurls or thrusts the first spear, and his example is followed by the rest. The weapons are not poisoned: they are fatal by a succession of small wounds. The baited beast rarely breaks, as might be expected, through the frail circle of assailants: its proverbial obstinacy is excited; it charges one man, who slips away, when another, with a scream, thrusts the long stiff spear into its hind quarters, which makes it change intention and turn fiercely from the fugitive to the fresh assailant. This continues till the elephant, losing breath and heart, attempts to escape; its enemies then redouble their efforts, and at length the huge prey, overpowered by pain and loss of blood trickling from a hundred gashes, bites the dust. The victors, after certain preliminaries of singing and dancing, carefully cut out the tusks with small, sharp axes, and the rich marrow is at once picked from the bamboo and devoured upon the spot, as the hare’s liver is in Italy. The hunt concludes with a grand feast of fat and garbage, and the hunters return home in triumph, laden with ivory, with ovals of hide for shields, and with festoons of raw and odorous meat spitted upon long poles.

Throughout East Africa the mouse, as the saying is, travels with a staff: the education of youth and the exercises of manhood are confined to the practice of weapons. Yet the people want the expertness of the Somal of the North and the Kafirs of the South; their internal feuds perpetuate the necessity of offensive measures, and of the presence of arms, but their agricultural state, rendering them independent of the chase, prevents their reliance upon their skill for daily food. In consequence of being ever armed, the African like the Asiatic is nothing without his weapons; he cannot use his strength, and when he comes to blows he fights like a woman. Thus the habitual show of arms is a mere substitute for courage; in dangerous countries, as in Ugogo, the Wanyamwezi do not dare to carry them for fear of provocation, whereas at home and in comparative safety they never appear without spear or knobstick.

The weapons universally carried are the spear and the assegai. The bow and arrow, the knobkerry, the dagger, and the battle-axe are confined to certain tribes, whilst the musket and the sword are used beyond the coast only by strangers. The shield is seldom seen.

The lance of the European, Arab, and Indian is unknown to these unequestrian races. The bravest tribes prefer the stabbing-spear, which brings them to close quarters with the enemy. The weapon indeed cannot make the man, but by reaction it greatly modifies his manliness. Thus the use of short weapons generally denotes a gallant nation; the old Roman gladius, the French briquet, and the Afghan charay would be useless in the hands of a timid people. Under the impression that the further men stand from their enemies the less is to be expected from them, the French knights not inaptly termed the “villanous saltpetre” the “grave of honour,” whilst their English rivals called the gun a “hell-born murderer,” and an “instrument hateful in the sight of God and man.” The Africans have also acted upon this idea. A great Kafir chief did what Plutarch relates of Camillus: he broke short the assegais of his “magnificent savages” when he sent them to war, and forbade each warrior to return without having stained his stick with blood; the consequence was, that, instead of “dumb-shooting” at a distance, they rushed in and won.