July, 1873Our camp at Kanyenyé was one of a group of some half-dozen built by various passing caravans, and on arriving there was a tremendous rush by our pagazi to secure the best huts. It was a regular case of "each for himself, and the devil take the hindmost."
Meanwhile, we were left to shift for ourselves without assistance and had much trouble in getting a place cleared for our tents, for the pagazi considered their work was over directly they were in camp and had deposited their loads.
Afterwards, when travelling with Arabs, I found that we had treated our men with too much consideration, and they in consequence tried to impose on us and were constantly grumbling and growling. Our loads were ten pounds lighter than the average of those carried for the Arab traders. And since they do not employ askari, their pagazi, besides carrying loads, pitch tents and build screens and huts required for the women and cooking; so that they are frequently two or three hours in camp before having a chance of looking after themselves. With us, the work of our porters was finished when they reached camp, for the askari pitched our tents, and the task of placing beds and boxes inside was left to our servants and gunbearers.
Bombay, whom we trusted to keep order amongst the askari was jealous of Issa and allowed the men to abuse him as they liked, and they were often so impertinent and insubordinate that Bombay himself was afraid to give an order. For instance, when directed to have a certain thing done, such as gathering wood for our camp-fire, and after a time being asked why it had not been brought in, he would reply, "Oh, no man want go !" On enquiring who had refused and desiring that the offenders should be brought to me for punishment, his next answer would be, "Tell all man, all man say no go." Of course, as no individual had been singled out for the duty, they considered that what was every man's business was no man's business, and it usually resulted in my having to give the order myself.
Magomba, who was chief of Kanyenyé when Burton passed in 1857, was still in power, being reported by his subjects to be over three hundred years of age and to be cutting his fourth set of teeth, the third set having, according to our informant, worked out about seven years before our visit.
From that time he had subsisted on pombé, being unable to eat meat, the only other food which one occupying his rank and position could deign to touch.
I have no doubt that this ancient chieftain was considerably over a century, for his grandchildren were grey and grizzled.
Another instance of the extraordinary longevity of the African races was noticed by Dr. Livingstone at Ma Kazenbé's. He found there in 1871 or 1872 a man named Pembereh, who had children upwards of thirty years of age when Dr. Lacerda e Ameilda visited that place in 1796. And this Pembereh was still living, according to the Arabs, in 1874, and must then have been at least a hundred and thirty years old.
No restrictions were placed upon the intercourse between the natives and ourselves, and throughout the day the camp was crowded with them, staring, yelling and gesticulating. They were a cowardly but merry set of thieves, laughing and joking among themselves at every new and strange sight.
Their voices were particularly unpleasant and jarring, their tones resembling snapping and snarling, even in ordinary conversation, and when excited the noise reminded one of a hundred pariah dogs fighting over their food.
Magomba's chancellor of the exchequer, chief of the customs, or wahtever the title of the official deputed to arrange mhongo nay be, was busily engaged repairing his tembé and we were told to wait until he had completed his architectural labours. When these were ended, he celebrated the event by a debauch on pombé, and remained in a drunken state for three days.
After he had recovered sufficiently to resume his official duties, he made the extravagant demand of one hundred doti; but luckily his notice was attracted by a pair of worthless blue goggles which so took his fancy that he insisted on having them.
Of course we declared they were of priceless value, and our apparent anxiety to keep them so whetted his desire that he consented to settle the mhongo at twenty doti if the goggles were included, a bargain which we gladly accepted.
It was simply a caprice on his part, for had we offered to dispose of the goggles we should have been laughed to scorn. I should not advise any future travellers to lay in a stock of these articles with a view to trading them, as the investment would most likely prove as profitless as Moses' gross of green spectacles.
But it is generally so with uncivilised men when something new catches their eye; they must have it, coûte que coûte. Yet a few days later, just like children tired of a new toy, they are ready to throw or give it away.
Some caravans from Unyamyembé arrived during our stay here. From the owner of one I heard that Livingstone had returned to that place after having started with the men sent up by Stanley, finding that he had not a sufficient number of carriers for all his stores, but had again left about five months since. I could discover no foundation for this story, and I fancy my informant had only passed through Unyamyembé on his way down from Karagwé, and had not obtained very reliable news.
A great-grandson of Magomba paid us a visit the day after our arrival. He was the heir-presumptive, and was better dressed than the commonalty, and the nails of his left hand had been allowed to grow at an enormous length as a sign of high rank, proving as it did that he was never required to do any manual labour.
It also provided him with the means of tearing the meat which formed his usual diet, though poorer people could only occasionally indulge in a small piece as a "kitchen" to their ugali or porridge.
As a consequence to this Nebuchadnezzar-like growth of nail he was unable to use his left hand for any ordinary purpose, and it was much smaller than his right. As soon as he withdrew I had a little visitor, about seven years old - a small Arab boy whose mother was taking him to the coast to be educated, his father having been killed in one of the fights with Mirambo. The boy was a perfect little gentleman and behaved admirably, and was much delighted with the pictures in some old illustrated papers and a book on natural history which I showed him.
I heard afterwards that he was very grieved at the thought that such good people as the English must go to perdition for drawing pictures of men.
As he was leaving my tent I heard the report of firearms in the camp, and running out, found that Sambo had been accidentally shot in the head by my servant, Mohammed Malim, with one of my Derringer pistols which he had been cleaning in his hut and had reloaded.
It appeared that on returning with them to my tent he was caught hold of by Sambo, who was rather a "character" and always skylarking, and a struggle ensued in which one of the pistols went off and the bullet struck Sambo just outside the eye. His skull proved so thick that the ball did no damage but only travelled along between the scalp and the bone, and could be felt standing out in a lump at the back of his head. It was soon cut out, and a little patching with diachylon plaister mended his pate most satisfactorily.
I put my servant under arrest pending the investigation of the case, but some insolent ruffians came to me demanding that he should be put in chains or otherwise they would shoot him.
This gross piece of impertinence annoyed me very much, so I gratified their desire for seeing some one in chains by clapping them in themselves.
This affair delayed us another day as I had to enquire thoroughly into the whole matter; and so much lying and false testimony was, I suppose and hope, never before heard in so short a time. The chief, or rather his advisers, also demanded four doti as a fine for blood having been shed on his soil, and although I felt much inclined to refuse, I unwillingly paid, fearing complications and delays.
Hyænas came prowling and howling around our camp nightly, and being anxious for a shot at one we used the carcase of a donkey which had died of a low fever as bait. This attracted a large spotted brute with a jaw strong enough to break the bone of a horse's hind leg, and he was shot by Dillon.
The yells of the hyænas excited our dogs to such an extent that we were obliged to fasten them up at night to prevent their bolting out of camp and getting killed.
It took a few lunars here abd found that they and my dead reckoning agreed well; and though a little different from Speke's longitude, his latitudes coincided exactly with mine.
Having pardoned the offenders whom I had put in chains, and received promises of better conduct, we left here on the 9th of July, and after two hours across level country arrived at a steep and rocky ascent which gave us an hour's hard climbing.
The summit was tableland, well-wooded and grassy, with numerous pools, some partially dried up, and in all directions there were fresh tracks of elephants and other large game.
When evening came, having fitted paper nightsights to our rifles, we sallied out to one of the pools, and ensconcing ourselves behind some bushes spent about three hours vainly hoping that game worthy of our lead might come to drink; but we saw only a few skulking hyænas at which we would not fire for fear of frightening a possible elephant.
Our next march was to Usekhé, the village of another independent chiefand, consequently, the place for another demand for mhongo.
But I need not recapitulate the vexatious delays which occurred at the villages of each of these petty tyrants, through the drunkenness of themselves and their advisers.
On this march granite gradually gave way to large granite boulders scattered amongst the trees, and afterwards there appeared a range of hills composed of masses of granite of most fantastic shapes and forms, piled together in grotesque confusion. Passing through a gap in this range we came upon an open and partially cultivated plain, bestrewn with piles of rock and some enormous solitary blocks of very striking appearance.
A short distance from camp there arose abruptly a grand mass of rocks having on the top a small pool with smooth steep sides, and according to report an elephant which had endeavoured to drink there had fallen in and been drowned. But the backdraw to this story was the absolute impossibility of any elephant reaching the pool, for the rocks were so slippery and difficult to climb that to visit the scene of the reported tragedy I was obliged to take off my boots and clamber up in my stockings.
Returning thence to camp we visited a place where the people were accustomed to perform incantations for obtaining rain in drought. And a charred post and heap of ashes marked the spot where some wretched wizard had paid with his life for failure to procure the much wished-for rains.
Whitchcraft is one of the curses and banes of the whole country, every illness being attributed to sorcery or evil spirits, and of course the wizard is resorted to in the hope of obtaining deliverance from the malign influence supposed to be exerted.
By means of playing alternately on the hopes and fears of their credulous dupes the workers of magic for a time realize a comfortable livelihood, but at last a day of retribution arrives. The magician is suspected, or denounced by a rival, of having caused the illness of some great person, and unless he can save himself by flight or turn the tide of popular opinion against his accuser he is seized and lashed to a stout post round which a circle of fire is kindled. The unfortunate wretch is then slowly roasted until he confesses, when the fire is heaped upon him and his life and agony quickly terminated.
Often while suffering these tortures the magician seems possessed by a sort of mania to uphold their reputation and boast of crimes they pretend to have caused, saying, "I have killed such a one," "I have prevented rain falling," "I caused the Wahumba to carry off so-and-so's cattle." In many cases they have faith to a great extent in their own powers, and certainly are thoroughly believed in and feared by their dupes.
White magic, such as divination, curing fevers, boils, &c., by means of charms and incantations, finds many professors and is considered harmless. A large proportion of those working white magic are women, but nearly all professors of the black art are men.
The son often succeeds to his father's profession; but where a magician has been suspected of practising against the welfare of a chief, his whole family is sometimes destroyed with him to prevent any of them harbouring ideas of revenge against the chief or his successor.
Whilst at Usekhé we amused ourselves with shooting pigeons which came in flocks just before sunset to drink at a watering-place near our camp; and at these shooting matches, which provided a little variety for our evening meals, the losers had as a penalty to fill a number of cartridges. We also found in the crevices of the rocks some coneys which were very good eating, being to the taste much like rabbits. Owing to a peculiar formation of their feet these coneys can cling to the face of the rocks like flies to a wall.
Usekhé was at one time the richest and most prosperous section of Ugogo. But many of the Arab caravan previously mentioned as attempting to pass without paying mhongo, died near here, and no rain fell for two years afterwards. This circumstance was attributed by the superstitious Wagogo to a curse, and numbers of the inhabitants therefore emigrated, and those who remained were forced to kill the greater part of their cattle in consequence of the failure of their crops.
During my rambles around here I again chafed my unlucky foot and had to give up walking for a few days, and Murphy complained of a slight attack of fever. Dillon said, however, that he never felt better, and that he could go on with a wild life for an unlimited number of years.
Mhongo being settled we moved again, passing through a strip of jungle to the large settlement of Khoko ruled over by Miguu Mifupi (or Shortshanks), who bears the worst reputation of all the potentates of Ugogo. But he is growing old and unable to personally enforce his demands, and mhongo was easily arranged.
Khoko was the most populous place we had yet seen, and was principally formed of an aggregation of tembés with passages between them. But at one end there were many houses inhabited by Wamerima merchants from Bagamoyo who had made this their head-quarters, and the huge thatched roofs of these dwellings lent to the settlement an air of semi-civilisation.
Three enormous sycamore trees (a species of fig) growing just outside the town formed a prominent mark for miles around. Under the spreading branches of one of this group our own party and a down caravan camped, as it afforded ample shelter for over five hundred people.
One of the Wamerima brought a large musical box into my tent, asking me to become the purchaser of it and assuring me it would prove a most valuable investment. When, however, it had been set going and had played a few bars of a waltz to the time of a funeral march, the music suddenly terminated in a grand crash which proved a permanent finale, the spindle of the fly-wheel having broken.
Here we learnt some particulars of the manner in which the obsequies of a chief are performed. In the first instance he is washed, and one is almost inclined to wonder that so unwonted a proceeding does not restore him to life. The body is then placed in an upright position in a hollow tree, and the people come daily to mourn and pour tombé and ashes on the corpse, indulging themselves meanwhile in a sort of wake.
This ceremony is continued until the body is thoroughly decomposed, when it is placed on a platform and exposed to the effects of the sun, rain, and dew, until nothing remains but the bones. And these are then buried.
In former days a number of slaves were sacrificed on such occasions, but I was assured that this practice had ceased for many years.
The bodies of commoners are simply thrown into the nearest jungle to be devoured by beasts of the field and fowls of the air.
Large numbers of Wahumba who have partially forsaken the wandering habits of their tribe are settled in the neighbourhood, and act as herdsmen to the Wagogo who occupy themselves more particularly with agriculture. They are a branch of the great Masai nation and inhabit the country just to the north of Ugogo, where they possess large herds but do not cultivate the ground or maintain permanent habitations.
Their diet consists entirely of milk mixed with blood and meat, which they devour almost raw.
They move from place to place in search of pasture, sheltering themselves at night under a framework of small branches covered with one or two dressed hides.
Their arms are short heavy spears unfit for throwing, and double-edged swords similar to those worn by the Roman Legionary, and they also carry a huge shield like that of the Wadirigo.
As might be expected from the nature of their arms, they are more courageous than their neighbours, and being great robbers are much feared. None but themselves and other members of the Masai family have, they assert, any right to possess cattle, and they therefore consider themselves perfectly justified in "lifting" any they meet with.
The last station in Ugogo is Mdaburu, distant one march from Khoko, the limits of the two clearings being only a couple of miles apart.
The fields were divided from each other and the road by rough fences, and the ground seemed much more carefully cultivated than usual.
Mdaburu is intersected by a wide and deep nullah bearing the same name. Even in the driest weather it contains large pools of good water, while in the rainy season it becomes an impetuous river rushing down to the Lufiji, of which it is one of the principal affluents. I questioned one of the natives who seemed more intelligent than his fellows, and ascertained that he had been to the junction of the Mdaburu with the Ruaha, as the upper portion of the Lufiji is called, and that the Ruaha was also merely a chain of pools in the dry season but a great river during the rains.
On the march a pagazi deserted with his load, which was a very serious matter since our stores of cloth were melting away owing to the high price of provisions and the large tribute we had so constantly been compelled to pay. I ordered Bilâl, with half-a-dozen askari, back to Khoko to look for the deserter, and also sent to the chief of Mdaburu telling him of the occurence and requesting him to give directions for the return of the man and his load; but all our endeavours to trace him proved futile, and the scoundrel got clear away.
Times had evidently changed since Burton passed through Ugogo, for while he was able to buy sixty-four rations for a doti we could never get more than twenty, and rarely more than ten ! Eggs were unattanaible luxuries, and milk and honey were exorbitantly dear.
Reckoning the doti at its Zanzibar value only, eggs, butter, and milk were more expensive than in England, and it was consequently necessary to exercise the most rigid economy in our living.
In the afternoon a headman and his retinue called upon us and squatted in my tent for a couple of hours, which was the reverse of pleasant, all of them being anointed with rancid ghee.
The headman informed me that, having been to Zanzibar, he had already seen something of white men and their ways; but now that they had entered his own country he wanted to see everything they possessed, and we were obliged to satisfy his curiosity. Anything he had previously seen he scaecely noticed, but examined minutely each novelty.
He recognized some pictures of animals which we showed him, but invariably looked at the back of the paper to see what was there, and remarked that he did not consider them finished since they did not give the likeness of the other side of the animal.
Still he was evidently pleased with the entertainment, and decided to detain us for three or four days for the benefit of the people who had never yet seen a white man and were anxious to have a look at us.
Charming as the idea might have been to his native mind, we scarcely appreciated being looked upon as a sort of Wombwell's menagerie travelling for the amusement of the natives.
Admission, too, was not only free, but we were actually obliged to pay for permission to come into the country to be stared at.
On the day of our arrival a caravan belonging to Said ibn Salim al Lamki, the Arab governor at Unyanyembé, came in from that place bound for the coast, with a large quantity of ivory intended for the purchase of powder for carrying on the fighting against Mirambo, who was still unconquered. But the Arabs were determined, as soon as further supplies of ammunition and reinfocement arrived, to strike such a blow as should finish him completely.
Some of the tusks were so immense that they required two men to carry them; and an idea of their weight may be formed when it is remembered that a Mnyamwési porter will bear 120 lbs. of ivory as a load.
Although content with single hire, the carriers of these enormous weights require double and treble rations, and whenever they feel so inclined compel the leaders of the caravan to halt.
Amongst the hangers-on of this caravan was Abdul Kader, Stanley's Hindoo tailor, who was going to the coast in the endeavour to return to his native land.
According to his account he had been constantly ill since leaving Mr. Stanley and was now only just sufficiently recovered to be able to march. He had subsisted during his sickness on the charity of the leading Arabs at Unyanyembé, and as he was a British subject representing himself to be destitute and unable to work I gave him four doti of cloth to assist him on his journey.
The Wagogo informed us that the Wanyamwési who withdrew from us at Mvumi, and aided and abetted deserters from our camp after having been under our protection, had been declaring that we had robbed them, and were trying to raise the country against us; thus proving, on a second occasion, that they had no idea of gratitude.
One of their headmen, however, had the impertinence afterwards t come to our house at Unyanyembé and ask for a present on the plea of old acquaintanceship.
The Wagogo did not at first entertain a very high opinion of our firearms, telling us that we trusted in guns which would be useless after the first discharge, when men with spears could fall upon us and annihilate us. But upon initiating them into the mysteries of breech-loaders and fixed bayonets they altered their tone and came to the conclusion that our fighting power was very considerable, and that it would be dangerous to attack us except in large numbers.
Having settled mhongo and written some letters which we entrusted to the charge of the leader od Said ibn Salim's caravan, we left Mdaburu on the 18th of July, for the Mgunda Mkali, or hot field, which lay between us and Unyanyembé.
In passing through Ugogo we had altogether paid as tribute seventy-seven coloured cloths, more than two hundred doti of common cloth, a coil of wire, abd three pounds of beads.
This at Zanzibar prices would amount to five hundred dollars, and in Ugogo represented nearly double that amount; but, happily, we were now leaving the mhongo-paying district.
