Chapter XII (11)

The mkuki, farárá, or spear, is more generally used for stabbing than throwing. It has a long narrow blade of untempered iron, so soft that it may be bent with the fingers; it is capable, however, of receiving a fine edge. The shoulders are rounded off, and one or two lines extend lengthways along the centre from socket to point. At the socket where the shaft is introduced, it its covered with a bit of skin from the tail of some animal drawn on like a stocking, and sometimes the iron is forced on when heated, so as to adhere by contraction of the metal. The shaft, which is five to six feet long, is a branch of the dark-brown mkole or the light-yellow mtata-tree, chosen because close-grained, tough, pliable, and free from knots; it is peeled, straightened in hot ashes, pared down to the heart, smoothed with a knife, carefully oiled or greased, without which it soon becomes brittle, and polished with the leaves of the mkuba-tree. The wood is mostly ornamented with twists of brass and copper wire; it is sometimes plated with zinc or tin, and it is generally provided with an iron heel for planting in the ground. Some tribes--the northern Wagogo and their neighbours the Wamasai for instance--have huge spear-heads like shovels, unfit for throwing. The best weapons for war are made in Karagwah.

The kikuki, assegai, or javelin, is much used by the Warori and other fighting tribes, who enter action with a sheaf of those weapons. Nowhere, however, did the East African appear possessed of the dexterity described by travellers amongst the southern races. The assegai resembles the spear in all points, except that the head is often barbed, and it is more lightly timbered; the shaft is rarely more than four feet in length, and it tapers to the thinness of a man’s little finger. It is laid upon the palm of the right hand, and balanced with a vibratory motion till the point of equilibrium is found, when it is delivered with little exertion of the muscles beyond the run or spring, and as it leaves the hand it is directed by the forefinger and thumb. Sometimes, to obviate breaking, the assegai is made like the Indian “sang,” wholly of iron.

The East African is a “good archère and a fayre.” The cubit-high Armiger begins as soon as he can walk with miniature weapons, a cane bow and reed bird-bolts tipped with wood, to practise till perfect at gourds and pumpkins; he considers himself a man when he can boast of iron tips. With many races “pudor est nescire sagittas.” The bravest, however, the Wamasai and the Wakwafi, the Warori and the Watuta, ignore the practice; with them--

“No proof of manhood, none
Of daring courage, is the bow;”

and the Somali abandons it to his Midgan or servile. The bow in East Africa is invariably what is called a “self-bow,” that is to say, made of a single piece, and backed weapons are unknown. It is uncommonly stiff, and the strongest archer would find it difficult to “draw up a yard;” of this nature probably was the bow sent to Cambyses by the Æthiopian monarch, with the taunting message that he had better not attack men who could bend such weapons. When straight it may measure five feet from tip to tip. It is made with the same care as the spear, from a branch of the mumepweke or the mtata-tree, laboriously cut and scraped so as to taper off towards the horns, and smeared with oil or grease, otherwise it is easily sprung, and it is sometimes adorned with plates of tin and zinc, with copper or brass wire and tips. The string is made of hide, gut, the tendons of a bullock’s neck or hock, and sometimes of tree-fibre; it is nearly double the bow in length, the extra portion being whipped for strength as well as contingent use round the upper horn. In shooting the bow is grasped with the left hand, but the thumb is never extended along the back; the string is drawn with the two bent forefingers, though sometimes the shaft is held after the Asiatic fashion with the thumb and index. The bow is pulled with a jerk as amongst the Somal, and not let fly as by Europeans with a long steady loose. The best bows are made by the tribes near the Rufiji River.

The arrow is about two feet in length; the stele or shaft is made of some light wood, and often of reed. Its fault is want of weight: to inflict damage upon an antelope it must not be used beyond point-blank, fifteen to twenty paces; and a score will be shot into a bullock before it falls. The musketeer, despising the arrow at a distance, fears it at close quarters, knowing that for his one shot the archer can discharge a dozen. From the days of Franklin to the era of Silistria, Citate, and Kars, fancy-tacticians have advocated the substitution of the bow or the addition of it to the “queen of weapons,” the musket. Their reasons for a revival of the obsolete arm are its lightness, its rapidity of discharge, and its silent action. They forget, however, the saying of Xenophon, that it is impiety in a man who has not learned archery from his childhood to ask such boon of the easy gods.

The East Africans ignore the use of red-hot arrows; and the poisoned shaft, an unmanly weapon, unused by the English and French archers even in their deadliest wars, is confined to the Wanyika of Mombasah, the Wazaramo, the Wak’hutu, the Western Wasagara, and the people of Uruwwa. The Wazaramo and Wak’hutu call the plant from which the poison is extracted Mkandekande. They sold at somewhat an exorbitant price a leaf full of the preparation, but avoided pointing out to the expedition the plant, which from their description appears to be a variety of euphorbia. M. Werne (“Sources of the White Nile,” chap. viii.) says that the river tribe prepare their arrow-poison from a kind of asclepias, whose milky sap is pressed out between two stones and allowed to thicken. Dr. Livingstone (chap. viii.) mentions the use of the n’gwa caterpillar amongst the Bushmen, who also poison waters with the Euphorbia arborescens; and Mr. Andersson (chap. vii.) specifies the Euphorbia candelabrum amongst the Ovaherero and the Hill Damaras. In East Africa the poison-leaves are allowed to distil their juices into a pot, which for inspissation is placed over a slow fire; becoming thick and slab, the contents are applied with a stick to the arrow, and are smoothed between the hands. When finished, the part behind the barb is covered with a shiny brown-black coat, not unlike pitch, to the extent of four or five inches. After drying it is renewed by the application of a fresh layer, the old being removed by exposure to the fire. The people fear this poison greatly; they wash their hands after touching it, and declare that a wounded man or beast loses sense, “moons about,” and comes to the ground before running a quarter of a mile. Much exaggeration, however, must be expected upon the subject of toxicology amongst barbarians: it acts like the Somali arrow-poison, as a strong narcotic, and is, probably, rarely fatal, even when freshly applied.

Fearing the action of the wind upon such light shafts if unfledged, the archer inserts into the cloven end three or four feathers, the cockfeather being as in Europe perpendicular when the arrow is nocked. The pile or iron head is curiously and cruelly barbed with long waving tails; the neck is toothed and edged by dinting the iron when hot with an axe, and it is sometimes half-sawed that it may break before extraction. The East Africans also have forkers or two-headed shafts, and bird-bolts or blunt arrows tipped with some hard wood, used when the weapon is likely to be lost. Before loosing an arrow the archer throws into the air a pinch of dust, not to find out the wind, but for good luck, like the Tartars of Tibet before discharging their guns. In battle the heavy-armed man holds his spear and a sheaf of spare arrows in the bow-hand, whilst a quiver slung to the left side contains reserve missiles, and a little axe stuck in the right side of the girdle is ready when the rest fail. The ronga or quiver is a bark-case, neatly cut and stained. It is of two forms, full-length, and provided with a cover for poisoned, and half-length for unpoisoned, arrows.

The rungu or knobkerry is the African club or mace; it extends from the Cape to the negroid and the Somal tribes north of the equator. The shape varies in almost every district: the head is long or round, oval or irregular, and sometimes provided on one side with an edge; it is cut out of the hardest wood, and generally from one piece. In some cases the knob is added to the handle, and in others it is supplied with a spear-head. The handle is generally two feet long, and it is cut thin enough to make the weapon top-heavy. The Mnyamwezi is rarely seen abroad without this weapon; he uses it in the chase, and in battle against the archer: he seems to trust it in close quarters rather than the feather-weight arrow or the spear that bends like gutta-percha, and most murders are committed with it. The East people do not, like the Kafirs, use the handle of the knobkerry as a dibble.

The sime or dudgeon is the makeshift for the Arab jambiyah and the Persian khanjar. The form of this weapon differs in almost every tribe. The Wahumba or Wamasai use blades about four feet long by two fingers in breadth; the long, round, and guardless hilt is ribbed for security of grasp, and covered with leather; their iron is of excellent quality, and the shape of the weapon has given rise to the report that “they make swords on the model of those of the Knights Templars.” The Wazegura and the Wagogo use knives not unlike the poniard of the Somal. In some tribes it is 3·5 feet long, with a leathern sheath extending half-way up the blade. Generally it is about half that size, straight, pointed, and double-edged, or jagged with teeth. The regions about the Lake manufacture and export great numbers of these weapons varying from a finger’s length to full dimensions.

The shoka or battle-axe is much used by the tribes around the Tanganyika. It has a blade of triangular shape, somewhat longer and thinner than that used as a working tool, which is passed through the bulging head of a short handle cut out of the bauhinia or some other hard tree. Amongst the Wasagara the peculiar mundu or bill often serves for the same purpose.

The targes of the Wasagara and the Wanyamwezi have already been described; the Wavinza make a shield of basket-work six feet by two, and much resembling that of the southern Kafirs, and the Wa’ungu carry large pavoises of bull’s hide. It is probable that the exceeding humidity of the climate, so ruinous to leather, prevents the general adoption of the shield; on the march it is merely an encumbrance, and the warrior must carry it on his head beyond the reach of the dewy grass.

The maritime races, the Wazegura, and others opposite the island of Zanzibar, have imprudently been allowed to purchase fire-arms, which they employ in obstructing caravans and in kidnapping-commandos against their weaker neighbours. A single German house has, it is said, sold off 13,000 Tower muskets in one year. The arms now preferred are those exported by Hamburg and America; they fetch 4 dollars each; the French single-barrel is somewhat cheaper, averaging 3 dollars 50 cents. In the interior fire-arms are still fortunately rare--the Arabs are too wise to arm the barbarians against themselves. In Unyamwezi an old gun is a present for a chief, and the most powerful rulers seldom can boast of more than three. Gunpowder is imported from Zanzibar in kegs of 10 and 25 lbs., bearing the American mark; it is of the description used in blasting, and fouls the piece after a few discharges. The price varies at Zanzibar from 3 dollars 50 cents to 7 dollars, and upon the coast from 5 to 10 dollars per small keg; in Unyamwezi ammunition is exchanged for ivory and slaves, and some Arab merchants keep as many as thirty kegs in the house, which they retail to factors and traders at the rate of 1 to 2 shukkahs per lb.

Swords in East Africa are used only by strangers. The Wasawahili and the slave-factors prefer the kittareh, a curved sabre made in Oman and Hazramaut, or, in its stead, an old German cavalry-blade. The Arabs carry as a distinction the “faranji,” a straight, thin, double-edged, guardless, and two-handed sword, about four feet long, and sharp as a carving-knife; the price varies from 10 to 100 dollars.

The negroid is an unmechanical race; his industry has scarcely passed the limits of savage invention. Though cotton abounds in the interior, the Wanyamwezi only have attempted a rude loom; and the working of iron and copper is confined to the Wafyoma and the Lakist races. The gourd is still the principal succedaneum for pottery. The other branches of industry which are necessary to all barbarians are mats and baskets, ropes and cords.

Carpentering amongst the East Africans is still in its rudest stage; no Dædalus has yet taught them to jag their knives into saws. It is limited to making the cots and cartels upon which the people invariably sleep, and to carving canoes, mortars, bowls, rude platters, spoons, stools, and similar articles of furniture. The tree, after being rung and barked to dry the juices, is felled by fire or the axe; it is then cut up into lengths of the required dimensions, and hacked into shape with slow and painful toil. The tools are a shoka, or hatchet of puerile dimensions, perhaps one-fifth the size of our broad axes, yet the people can use it to better advantage than the admirable implement of the backwoodsman. The mbizo or adze is also known in the interior, but none except the Fundi and the slaves trained upon the coast have ever seen a hand-saw, a centre-bit, or a chisel.

Previous to weaving, cotton is picked and cleaned with the hand; it is then spun into a coarse thread. Like the Paharis of India, the East Africans ignore the distaff; they twist the material round the left wrist. The mlavi, or spindle, is of two forms; one is a short stick, inserted in a hole practised through a lump of lead or burnt clay, like the Indian bhaunri; the other is a thin bit of wood, about 1·5 ft. long, with a crescent of the same material on the top, and an iron hook to hold the thread. The utanda, or loom-frame differs from the vertical-shaped article of West Africa. Two side-poles about twelve feet long, and supported at the corners by four uprights, are placed at an angle, enabling the workman to stand to his work; and the oblong is completed by two cross-bars, round which the double line of the warp, or longitudinal threads of the woven tissue, are secured. The dimensions of the web vary from five to six feet in length, by two to three broad. The weft, or transverse thread, is shot with two or three thin laths, or spindles, round which the white and coloured yarns are wound, through the doubled warp, which is kept apart by another lath passing between the two layers, and the spindle is caught with the left hand as it appears at the left side. Lastly, a lath, broader and flatter than the others, is used to close the work, and to beat the thread home. As the workman deems three hours per diem ample labour, a cloth will rarely be finished under a week. Taste is shown in the choice of patterns: they are sometimes checks with squares, alternately black and white, or in stripes of black variegated with red dyes upon a white ground: the lines are generally broad in the centre, but narrow along the edges, and the texture not a little resembles our sacking. The dark colour is obtained from the juice of the mzima-tree; it stains the yarn to a dull brown, which becomes a dark mulberry, or an Indian-ink black, when buried for two or three days in the vegetable mud of the ponds and pools. The madder-red is produced by boiling the root and bark of a bush called mda’a; an ochreish tint is also extracted from the crimson matter that stains the cane and the leaves of red holcus. All cloths have the tambua or fringe indispensable in East Africa. Both weaving and dyeing are men’s not women’s work in these lands.

The cloth is a poor article: like the people of Ashanti, who from time immemorial have woven their own cottons, the East African ever prefers foreign fabrics. The loose texture of his own produce admits wind and rain; when dry it is rough and unpleasant, when wet heavy, comfortless as leather, and it cannot look clean, as it is never bleached. According to the Arabs, the yarn is often dipped into a starch made from grain, for the purpose of thickening the appearance of the texture: this disappears after the first washing, and the cloth must be pegged down to prevent its shrinking to half-size. The relative proportion of warp and weft is unknown, and the woolly fuzzy quality of the half-wild cotton now in use impoverishes the fabric. Despite the labour expended upon these cloths, the largest size may be purchased for six feet of American domestics, or for a pair of iron hoes: there is therefore little inducement to extend the manufacture.

Iron is picked up in the state called Utundwe, or gangue, from the sides of low sandstone hills: in places the people dig pits from two to four feet deep, and, according to the Arabs, they find tears, nodules, and rounded lumps. The pisolithic iron, common in the maritime regions, is not worked. The mhesi or blacksmith’s art is still in its infancy. The iron-stone is carried to the smithy, an open shed, where the work is done: the smelting-furnace is a hole in the ground, filled with lighted charcoal, upon which the utundwe is placed, and, covered with another layer of fire, it is allowed to run through the fuel. The blast is produced by mafukutu (bellows): they are two roughly rounded troughs, about three inches deep by six in diameter, hewn out of a single bit of wood and prolonged into a pair of parallel branches, pierced for the passage of the wind through two apertures in the walls of the troughs. The troughs are covered with skin, to which are fixed two long projecting sticks for handles, which may be worked by a man sitting. A stone is placed upon the bellows for steadiness, and clay nozzles, or holcus-canes with a lateral hole, are fixed on to the branches to prevent them from charring. Sometimes as many as five pairs are worked at once, and great is the rapidity required to secure a continuous outdraught. Mr. Andersson (“Lake Ngami,” chap. xvi.) gives a sketch of a similar contrivance amongst the South Africans: the clay-tubes, however, are somewhat larger than those used in Unyamwezi by “blacksmiths at work.” The ore is melted and remelted several times, till pure; tempering and case-hardening are unknown, and it is stored for use by being cast in clay-moulds, or made up into hoes. The hammer and anvil are generally smooth stones. The principal articles of ironmongery are spears, assegais, and arrow-heads, battle-axes, hatchets, and adzes, knives and daggers, sickles and razors, rings and sambo, or wire circlets. The kinda is a large bell, hung by the ivory-porter to his tusk on the line of the march: the kengere or kiugi a smaller variety which he fastens to his legs. Pipes, with iron bowls and stems, are made by the more ingenious, and the smoker manufactures for himself small pincers or pliers which, curious to say, are unknown even by name to the more civilised people of Zanzibar.

Copper is not found upon this line in East Africa. From the country of the Kazembe, however, an excellent red and heavy, soft and bright variety, not unlike that of Japan, finds its way to Ujiji, and sometimes to the coast. It is sold in bars from one to two feet long. At Ujiji, where it is cheap, four to five pounds are procurable for two doti, there worth about four dollars. Native copper, therefore, is almost as expensive as that imported from Europe. It is used in making the rude and clumsy bangles affected by both sexes, sambo, and ornaments for the spear and bow, the staff and the knobkerry.

The art of ceramics has made but little progress in East Africa; no Anacharsis has yet arisen to teach her sons the use of the wheel. The figuline, a greyish-brown clay, is procured from river-beds, or is dug up in the country; it is subjected to the preliminary operations of pounding, rubbing dry upon a stone, pulverising, and purifying from stones and pebbles. It is then worked into a thick mass, with water, and the potter fashions it with the hand, first shaping the mouth; he adds an inch to it when dry, hardens it in the sun, makes another addition, and thus proceeds till it is finished. Lines and other ornaments having been traced, the pots are baked in piles of seven or eight, by burning grass--wood-fire would crack them--consequently the material always remains half-raw. Usually the colour becomes lamp-black; in Usagara, however, the potter’s clay burns red, like the soil--the effect of iron. A cunning workman will make in a day four of these pots, some of them containing several gallons, and their perfect regularity of form, and often their picturesqueness of shape, surprise the stranger. The best are made in Ujiji, Karagwah, and Ugunda: those of Unyamwezi are inferior, and the clay of Zanzibar is of all the worst.

There are many kinds of pots which not a little resemble the glazed jars of ancient Egypt. The ukango, which acts as vat in fermenting liquor, is of the greatest dimensions. The mtungi is a large water-vessel with a short and narrow neck, and rounded at the bottom so as to be conveniently carried on the head. The chungu, or cooking-pot, has a wide and open mouth; it is of several varieties, large and small. The mkungu is a shallow bowl, precisely like those made at the tomb of Moses, and now familiar to Europe. At Ujiji and on the Lake they also manufacture smaller vessels, with and without spouts.

In a country where pottery is scarce and dear, the buyu or Cucurbita lagenaria supplies every utensil except those used for cooking; its many and various adaptations render it a valuable production. The people train it to grow in the most fantastic shapes, and ornament it by tatooing with dark paint, and by patterns worked in brass tacks and wires; where it splits, it is artistically sewn together. The larger kinds serve as well-buckets, water-pots, travelling-canteens, churns, and the sounding-boards of musical instruments: a hookah, or water-pipe, is made by distorting the neck, and the smaller varieties are converted into snuff-boxes, medicine-cases, and unguent-pots. The fruit of the calabash-tree is also called buyu: split and dried it is used as ladles, but it is too small to answer all the purposes of the gourd.

The East Africans excel in the manufacture of mtemba or bori--pipe-heads. These are of two kinds. One is made from a soft stone, probably steatite, found in Usonga, near Utumbara, and on the road to Karagwah: it is, however, rare, and about ten times the price of the clay bowls, because less liable to break. The other is made of a plastic or pipe-clay, too brittle to serve for pots, and it invariably cracks at the shank, unless bound with wire. Both are hand-made, and are burned in the same rough way as the pottery. At Msene, where the clay pipe is cheapest, the price of the bowl is a khete, or double string of white or blue beads. The pipe of Unyamwezi is of graceful shape, a cone with the apex downwards; this leaves but little of the hot, oily, and high-smelling tobacco at the bottom, whereas in Europe the contrary seems to be the rule. In Ujiji the bowl is small, rounded, and shallow; it is, moreover, very brittle. The most artful “mtemba” is made by the people of Uvira: black inside, like other pottery, its exterior is coloured a greyish-white, and is adorned with red by means of the Indian geru (Colcothar or Crocus Martis). Bhang is always, and tobacco is sometimes, smoked in a water-pipe: the bowl is of huge size, capable of containing at least half a pound, and its upper half is made to incline towards the smoker’s face. The Lakist tribes have a graceful variety, like the Indian “chillam,” very different from the awkward, unwieldy, and distorted article now fashionable in Unyamwezi and the Eastern countries. The usual pipe-stem is a tube of about 1·5 feet long, generally a hollow twig of the dwarf melewele-tree. As it is rudely bored with hot wire, it must be made air-tight by wax and a coating of brass or copper wire; a strap of hairy skin prevents the pipe-shank parting from the stick. Iron and brass tubes are rare and highly prized; the fortunate possessor will sometimes ask for a single specimen two shukkahs.

Basket-making and mat-weaving are favourite occupations in East Africa for both sexes and all ages; even the Arabs may frequently be seen absorbed in an employment which in Oman would be considered derogatory to manliness. The sengo, or common basket, from the coast to the Lake, is an open, shallow, and pan-shaped article, generally made of mwanzi, or bamboo-bark, reddened in parts and stained black in others by the root of the Mkuruti and other trees, and white where the outer coat has been removed from the bamboo. The body, which resembles a popular article in ancient Egypt, is neatly plaited, and the upper ends are secured to a stout hoop of the same material. The kanda (in the plural makanda) acts in the interior as matting for rooms, and is converted into bags for covering bales of cloth, beads, and similar articles. It is made from the myara (myala) or Chamærops humilis; the leaf is peeled, sun-dried, and split with a bit of iron into five or six lengths, joined at the base, which is trimmed for plaiting. The Karagwah, the only mat made in the interior of Africa, is used as bedding and carpeting; on journeys the porters bivouac under it; it swells with the wet, and soon becomes impervious to rain or heavy dew. It is of two kinds: one of rushes growing in the vicinity of water, the other of grass rolled up into little bundles. A complicated stitch runs along the whole length in double lines. The best description of mat is called mkeke. It is made at Zanzibar and the coast, from the young fronds of the ukhindu or brab, neatly stained with various dyes. Women of family pride themselves upon their skill in making the mkeke, which still attains a price of four dollars. Amongst the maritime races none but the chiefs have a right to sit upon it; there are no such distinctions in the interior, where these mats are carried for sale by the slaves. From the brab also are made neat strainers to purify honey, pombe, and similar articles. They are open-mouthed cylinders, from one to two feet long, and varying in diameter from three to six inches. The bottom is narrowed by whipping fibre round the loose ends of the leaves. The fishing-nets have been described when treating of the Tanganyika. The luávo, or hand-net, is made of calabash or other fibre, with coarse wide meshes; it is affixed to two sticks firmly planted in the ground, and small animals are driven into it by beaters.

The basts or barks and fibrous substances in East Africa are cheap and abundant, but labour and conveyance being difficult and expensive, they would require to be shipped from Zanzibar in the condition of half-stuff. The best and most easily divisible into pliant and knot-tying fibres are, upon the coast the pineapple, and in the interior the plantain. The next in value are the integuments of the calabash and the myombo tree. These fibres would produce a good article were it not for the artlessness of African manipulation. The bark is pounded or chewed, and, in lieu of spinning, is twisted between the hands; the largest ropes are made in half an hour, and break after a few minutes of hard work. A fine silky twine, used for fishing, is made from the aloetic plants called by the Wasawahili mkonge, and by the Arabs bag, masad and kideh: it is the hig or haskul of Somaliland, where it affects the poorest ground, cannot be burnt down, and is impassable to naked legs and cattle. The leaves are stripped of their coats, and the ends being tightly bound between two pieces of wood, the mass of fibre is drawn out like a sword from its sheath. Fatilah, or matchlock matches, are made in Zanzibar of cotton, and in the interior of calabash fibre.

As might be expected among a sparse population leading a comparatively simple life, the vast variety of diseases which afflict more civilised races, who are collected in narrow spaces, are unknown in East Africa even by name. Its principal sporadic is fever, remittent and intermittent, with its multitudinous secondaries, concerning which notices have been scattered through the preceding pages. The most dangerous epidemic is its aborigen, the small-pox, which, propagated without contact or fomites, sweeps at times like a storm of death over the land. For years it has not left the Arab colony at Kazeh, and, shortly before the arrival of the Expedition, in a single month 52 slaves died out of a total of 800. The ravages of this disease amongst the half-starved and over-worked gangs of caravan porters have already been described; as many as a score of these wretches have been seen at a time in a single caravan; men staggering along blinded and almost insensible, jostling and stumbling against every one in their way; and mothers carrying babes, both parent and progeny in the virulent stage of the fell disease. The Arabs have partially introduced the practice of inoculating, anciently known in South Africa; the pus is introduced into an incision in the forehead between the eyebrows. The people have no remedy for small-pox: they trust entirely to the vis medicatrix. There is a milder form of the malady, called shúrúá, resembling the chicken-pox of Europe; it is cured by bathing in cold water and smearing the body with ochreish earth. The Arab merchants of Unyanyembe declare that, when they first visited Karagwah, the people were decimated by the táún, or plague. They describe correctly the bubo under the axillæ, the torturing thirst, and the rapid fatality of the disease. In the early part of 1859 a violent attack of cholera, which extended from Maskat along the eastern coast of Arabia and Africa, committed terrible ravages in the island of Zanzibar and throughout the maritime regions. Of course, no precautions of quarantine or cordon militaire were taken, yet the contagion did not extend into the interior.

Strangers in East Africa suffer from dysenteries and similar disorders consequent upon fever; and, as in Egypt, few are free from hæmorrhoids, which in Unyamwezi are accompanied by severe colics and umbilical pains. Rheumatism and rheumatic fever, severe catarrhs and influenzas, are caused by the cold winds, and, when crossing the higher altitudes, pneumonia and pleurisis abound in the caravan. On the coast many settlers, Indian and Arab, show upon the skin whitish leprous spots, which are treated with various unguents. In the interior, though well provided with fresh meat and vegetables, travellers are attacked by scurvy, even in the absence of its normal exciting causes, damp, cold, and poor diet. This phenomenon has often been observed upon the upper course of the Nile; Europeans have been prostrated by it even in the dry regions westward of the Red Sea, and the Portuguese officers who explored Usenda of the Kazembe suffered tortures from the complaint.

Common diseases among the natives are umbilical hernia and prolapsus: the latter is treated by the application of powdered bhang, dry or mixed with ghee. They are subject to kihindu-hindu--in Arabic, sara--the epilepsy, which they pretend to cure by the marrow of rhinoceros’ shank. Of the many fits and convulsions which affect them, the kichyoma-chyoma is the most dreaded. The word, which means the “little irons,” describes the painful sensations, the cramps and stitches, the spasms and lancinations, which torment the sufferer. Many die of this disease. It is not extraordinary that the fits, convulsions, and contortions which it suddenly induces should lead the people to consider it in the light of possession, and the magician to treat it with charms. Madness and idiocy are not uncommon: of the patient it is said, “Ana wazimo”--“he has fiends.” In most parts the people, after middle age, are tender-eyed from the effects of smoke within, glare without, exposure and debauchery. Not a few samples of acute ophthalmic disease were seen.

In the lower and more malarious spots, desquamations, tumours, and skin diseases are caused by suddenly suppressed perspiration. The terrible kidonda or helcoma of the maritime regions and the prurigo of Ujiji have already been alluded to. The “chokea” is a hordeolum or large boil, generally upon the upper eyelid. The “funza” is supposed to result from the bite of a large variety of fly. It begins with a small red and fiery swelling, which bursts after a time and produces a white entozoon about half an inch in length. “Kumri” are common blains, and “p’hambazi” malignant blind-boils, which leave a deep discoloured scar; when the parts affected are distant from the seat of circulation, the use of the limb is sometimes lost. For most of these sores tutiya or murtutu, blue-stone, is considered a specific.

As might be expected amongst an ignorant and debauched race coming in direct contact with semi-civilisation, the lues has found its way from the island of Zanzibar to Ujiji and into the heart of Africa. It is universally believed both by the natives and by the Arabs, who support the assertion with a host of proofs, to be propagated without contact. Such, indeed, is the general opinion of the Eastern world, where perhaps its greater virulence may assimilate it to the type of the earlier attacks in Europe. The disease, however, dies out, and has not taken root in the people as amongst the devoted races of North America and the South Sea islands. Although a malignant form was found extending throughout the country, mutilation of the features and similar secondaries were not observed beyond the maritime region. Except blue-stone, mineral drugs are unknown, and the use of mercury and ptyalism have not yet exasperated the evil. The minor form of lues is little feared and yields readily to simples; the consequences, however, are strangury, cystitis, chronic nephritic disease, and rheumatism.

“Polypharmacy” is not the fault of the profession in East Africa, and the universal belief in possession tends greatly to simplify the methodus modendi. The usual cathartic is the bark of a tree called kalákalá, which is boiled in porridge. There is a great variety of emetics, some so violent that several Arabs who have been bold enough to swallow them, barely escaped with life. The actual cautery--usually a favourite counter-irritant amongst barbarous people--is rarely practised in East Africa; in its stead powder of blue-stone is applied to the sore or wound, which has been carefully scraped, and the patient howls with pain for twenty-four hours. They bleed frequently as Italians, who even after being startled resort to a mild phlebotomy, and they cut down straight upon the vein with a sharp knife. They prefer the cucurbitula cruenta, like the Arabs, who say,--

“Few that cup repent;
Few that bleed, rejoice.”

A favourite place is the crown of the head. The practitioner, after scarifying the skin with a razor or a dagger, produces a vacuum by exhausting the air through a horn applied with wetted edges; at the point is a bit of wax, which he closes over the aperture with his tongue or teeth, as the hospital “singhi” in India uses a bit of leather. Cupping--called ku hu míká or kumíká--is made highly profitable by showing strange appearances in the blood. They cure by excision the bite of snakes, which, however, are not feared nor often fatal in these lands. They cannot reduce dislocations, and they never attempt to set or splint a broken bone.

The mganga or medicine-man, in his character of “doctor,” is a personage of importance. He enters the sick-room in the dignity of antelope-horn, grease, and shell-necklace, and he sits with importance upon his three-legged stool. As the devil saves him the trouble of diagnosis, he begins by a prescription, invariably ordering something edible for the purpose, and varying it, according to the patient’s means, from a measure of grain to a bullock. He asserts, for instance, that a pound of fat is required for medicine; a goat must be killed, and his perquisite is the head or breast--a preliminary to a more important fee. Then the price of prescription--a _sine quâ non_ to prescribing--is settled upon and paid in advance. After certain questions, invariably suggesting the presence of poison, the medical practitioner proceeds to the cure; this is generally a charm or periapt bound round the part affected. In common diseases, however, like fever, the mganga will condescend to such profane processes as adhibiting sternutatories and rubbing the head with vegetable powders. If the remedies prove too powerful or powerless, he at once decamps; under normal circumstances he incapacitates himself for performing his promise of calling the next day by expending his fee in liquor. The Africans have in one point progressed beyond Europeans: there are as many women physicians as men.

A Mheha.]

CHAP. XIX.

THE CHARACTER AND RELIGION OF THE EAST AFRICANS; THEIR GOVERNMENT, AND SLAVERY.

The study of psychology in Eastern Africa is the study of man’s rudimental mind, when, subject to the agency of material nature, he neither progresses nor retrogrades. He would appear rather a degeneracy from the civilised man than a savage rising to the first step, were it not for his apparent incapacity for improvement. He has not the ring of the true metal; there is no rich nature, as in the New Zealander, for education to cultivate. He seems to belong to one of those childish races which, never rising to man’s estate, fall like worn-out links from the great chain of animated nature. He unites the incapacity of infancy with the unpliancy of age; the futility of childhood, and the credulity of youth, with the scepticism of the adult and the stubbornness and bigotry of the old. He has “beaten lands” and seas. For centuries he has been in direct intercourse with the more advanced people of the eastern coast, and though few have seen an European, there are not many who have not cast eyes upon an Arab. Still he has stopped short at the threshold of progress; he shows no signs of development; no higher and more varied orders of intellect are called into being. Even the simple truths of El Islam have failed to fix the thoughts of men who can think, but who, absorbed in providing for their bodily wants, hate the trouble of thinking. His mind, limited to the objects seen, heard, and felt, will not, and apparently cannot, escape from the circle of sense, nor will it occupy itself with aught but the present. Thus he is cut off from the pleasures of memory, and the world of fancy is altogether unknown to him. Perhaps the automaton which we call spiritual suffers from the inferiority of the mechanism by which it acts.

The East African is, like other barbarians, a strange mixture of good and evil: by the nature of barbarous society, however, the good element has not, whilst the evil has, been carefully cultured.

As a rule, the civilised or highest type of man owns the sway of intellect, of reason; the semi-civilised--as are still the great nations of the East--are guided by sentiment and propensity in a degree incomprehensible to more advanced races; and the barbarian is the slave of impulse, passion, and instinct, faintly modified by sentiment, but ignorant of intellectual discipline. He appears, therefore, to the civilised man a paralogic being,--a mere mass of contradictions; his ways are not our ways, his reason is not our reason. He deduces effects from causes which we ignore; he compasses his ends by contrivances which we cannot comprehend; and his artifices and polity excite, by their shallowness and “inconsequence,” our surprise and contempt. Like that Hindu race that has puzzled the plain-witted Englishman for the century closing with the massacres of Delhi and Cawnpore, he is calculated to perplex those who make conscience an instinct which elevates man to the highest ground of human intelligence. He is at once very good-tempered and hard-hearted, combative and cautious; kind at one moment, cruel, pitiless, and violent at another; sociable and unaffectionate; superstitious and grossly irreverent; brave and cowardly, servile and oppressive; obstinate, yet fickle and fond of changes; with points of honour, but without a trace of honesty in word or deed; a lover of life, though addicted to suicide; covetous and parsimonious, yet thoughtless and improvident; somewhat conscious of inferiority, withal unimprovable. In fact, he appears an embryo of the two superior races. He is inferior to the active-minded and objective, the analytic and perceptive European, and to the ideal and subjective, the synthetic and reflective Asiatic. He partakes largely of the worst characteristics of the lower Oriental types--stagnation of mind, indolence of body, moral deficiency, superstition, and childish passion; hence the Egyptians aptly termed the Berbers and negroes the “perverse race of Kush.”

The main characteristic of this people is the selfishness which the civilised man strives to conceal, because publishing it would obstruct its gratification. The barbarian, on the other hand, displays his inordinate egotism openly and recklessly; his every action discloses those unworthy traits which in more polished races chiefly appear on public occasions, when each man thinks solely of self-gratification. Gratitude with him is not even a sense of prospective favours; he looks upon a benefit as the weakness of his benefactor and his own strength; consequently, he will not recognise even the hand that feeds him. He will, perhaps, lament for a night the death of a parent or a child, but the morrow will find him thoroughly comforted. The name of hospitality, except for interested motives, is unknown to him: “What will you give me?” is his first question. To a stranger entering a village the worst hut is assigned, and, if he complain, the answer is that he can find encamping ground outside. Instead of treating him like a guest, which the Arab Bedouin would hold to be a point of pride, of honour, his host compels him to pay and prepay every article, otherwise he might starve in the midst of plenty. Nothing, in fact, renders the stranger’s life safe in this land, except the timid shrinking of the natives from the “hot-mouthed weapon” and the necessity of trade, which induces the chiefs to restrain the atrocities of their subjects. To travellers the African is, of course, less civil than to merchants, from whom he expects to gain something. He will refuse a mouthful of water out of his abundance to a man dying of thirst; utterly unsympathising, he will not stretch out a hand to save another’s goods, though worth thousands of dollars. Of his own property, if a ragged cloth or a lame slave be lost, his violent excitement is ridiculous to behold. His egotism renders him parsimonious even in self-gratification; the wretched curs, which he loves as much as his children, seldom receive a mouthful of food, and the sight of an Arab’s ass feeding on grain elicits a prolonged “Hi! hi!” of extreme surprise. He is exceedingly improvident, taking no thought for the morrow--not from faith, but rather from carelessness as to what may betide him; yet so greedy of gain is he that he will refuse information about a country or the direction of a path without a present of beads. He also invariably demands prepayment: no one keeps a promise or adheres to an agreement, and, if credit be demanded for an hour, his answer would be, “There is nothing in my hand.” Yet even greed of gain cannot overcome the levity and laxity of his mind. Despite his best interests, he will indulge the mania for desertion caused by that mischievous love of change and whimsical desire for novelty that characterise the European sailor. Nor can even lucre prevail against the ingrained indolence of the race--an indolence the more hopeless as it is the growth of the climate. In these temperate and abundant lands Nature has cursed mankind with the abundance of her gifts; his wants still await creation, and he is contented with such necessaries as roots and herbs, game, and a few handfuls of grain--consequently improvement has no hold upon him.

In this stage of society truth is no virtue. The “mixture of a lie” may “add to pleasure” amongst Europeans; in Africa it enters where neither pleasure nor profit can arise from the deception. If a Mnyamwezi guide informs the traveller that the stage is short, he may make up his mind for a long and weary march, and _vice versâ_. Of course, falsehood is used as a defence by the weak and oppressed; but beyond that, the African desires to be lied to, and one of his proverbs is, “’Tis better to be deceived than to be undeceived.” The European thus qualifies the assertion,

“For sure the pleasure is as great
In being cheated as to cheat.”

Like the generality of barbarous races, the East Africans are wilful, headstrong, and undisciplinable: in point of stubbornness and restiveness they resemble the lower animals. If they cannot obtain the very article of barter upon which they have set their mind, they will carry home things useless to them; any attempt at bargaining is settled by the seller turning his back, and they ask according to their wants and wishes, without regard to the value of goods. Grumbling and dissatisfied, they never do business without a grievance. Revenge is a ruling passion, as the many rancorous fratricidal wars that have prevailed between kindred clans, even for a generation, prove. Retaliation and vengeance are, in fact, their great agents of moral control. Judged by the test of death, the East African is a hardhearted man, who seems to ignore all the charities of father, son, and brother. A tear is rarely shed, except by the women, for departed parent, relative, or friend, and the voice of the mourner is seldom heard in their abodes. It is most painful to witness the complete inhumanity with which a porter seized with small-pox is allowed by his friends, comrades, and brethren to fall behind in the jungle, with several days’ life in him. No inducement--even beads--can persuade a soul to attend him. Every village will drive him from its doors; no one will risk taking, at any price, death into his bosom. If strong enough, the sufferer builds a little bough-hut away from the camp, and, provided with his rations--a pound of grain and a gourdful of water--he quietly expects his doom, to feed the hyæna and the raven of the wild. The people are remarkable for the readiness with which they yield to fits of sudden fury; on these occasions they will, like children, vent their rage upon any object, animate or inanimate, that presents itself. Their temper is characterised by a nervous, futile impatience; under delay or disappointment they become madmen. In their own country, where such displays are safe, they are remarkable for a presumptuousness and a violence of manner which elsewhere disappears. As the Arabs say, there they are lions, here they become curs. Their squabbling and clamour pass description: they are never happy except when in dispute. After a rapid plunge into excitement, the brawlers alternately advance and recede, pointing the finger of threat, howling and screaming, cursing and using terms of insult which an inferior ingenuity--not want of will--causes to fall short of the Asiatic’s model vituperation. After abusing each other to their full, both “parties” usually burst into a loud laugh or a burst of sobs. Their tears lie high; they weep like Goanese. After a cuff, a man will cover his face with his hands and cry as if his heart would break. More furious shrews than the women are nowhere met with. Here it is a great truth that “the tongues of women cannot be governed.” They work off excitement by scolding, and they weep little compared with the men. Both sexes delight in “argument,” which here, as elsewhere, means two fools talking foolishly. They will weary out of patience the most loquacious of the Arabs. This development is characteristic of the East African race, and “maneno marefu!”--long words!--will occur as a useless reproof half a dozen times in the course of a single conversation. When drunk, the East African is easily irritated; with the screams and excited gestures of a maniac he strides about, frantically flourishing his spear and agitating his bow, probably with notched arrow; the spear-point and the arrow-head are often brought perilously near, but rarely allowed to draw blood. The real combat is by pushing, pulling hair, and slapping with a will, and a pair thus engaged require to be torn asunder by half a dozen friends. The settled tribes are, for the most part, feeble and unwarlike barbarians; even the bravest East African, though, like all men, a combative entity, has a valour tempered by discretion and cooled by a high development of cautiousness. His tactics are of the Fabian order: he loves surprises and safe ambuscades; and in common frays and forays the loss of one per cent. justifies a _sauve qui peut_. This people, childlike, is ever in extremes. A man will hang himself from a rafter in his tent, and kick away from under him the large wooden mortar upon which he has stood at the beginning of the operation with as much sang-froid as an Anglo-Saxon in the gloomy month of November; yet he regards annihilation, as all savages do, with loathing and ineffable horror. “He fears death,” to quote Bacon, “as children fear to go in the dark; and as that natural fear in children is increased with tales, so is the other.” The African mind must change radically before it can “think upon death, and find it the least of all evils.” All the thoughts of these negroids are connected with this life. “Ah!” they exclaim, “it is bad to die! to leave off eating and drinking! never to wear a fine cloth!” As in the negro race generally, their destructiveness is prominent; a slave never breaks a thing without an instinctive laugh of pleasure; and however careful he may be of his own life, he does not value that of another, even of a relative, at the price of a goat. During fires in the town of Zanzibar, the blacks have been seen adding fuel, and singing and dancing, wild with delight. On such occasions they are shot down by the Arabs like dogs.