Transcriber’s Note:

Footnotes have been collected at the end of each chapter, and are linked for ease of reference.

Appendix III has a set of end notes, which have been linked for ease of navigation.

Minor errors, attributable to the printer, have been corrected. Please see the transcriber’s [note] at the end of this text for details regarding the handling of any textual issues encountered during its preparation.

The cover image has been modified to include information from the title page and, so modified, placed in the public domain.

Any corrections are indicated using an underline highlight. Placing the cursor over the correction will produce the original text in a small popup.

Any corrections are indicated as hyperlinks, which will navigate the reader to the corresponding entry in the corrections table in the note at the end of the text.

ZANZIBAR.

VOL. II.

SAVAGE OF THE NYIKA.

ZANZIBAR;
CITY, ISLAND, AND COAST.

BY

RICHARD F. BURTON.

IN TWO VOLUMES.

VOL. II.

LONDON:

TINSLEY BROTHERS, 18, CATHERINE ST., STRAND.

1872.

[All Rights reserved.]

JOHN CHILDS AND SON, PRINTERS. .

CONTENTS OF VOL. II.

ZANZIBAR.

PART II.
THE COAST AND THE INTERIOR.

ZANZIBAR.

CHAPTER I.
FROM ZANZIBAR TO MOMBASAH.

Urbis ab angusto tractu quâ vergit in Austrum,

Planities vicina patet: nam cætera Pontus

Circuit, exiguo dirimi se tramite passus.

C. Claud, in Ruf. lib. 2. 348.

On Monday, January 5, 1857, began our trial trip, which homely term was justly written large as ‘tentative expedition,’ by the then President of the Royal Geographical Society. But a stiff north-easter blowing dead in our teeth, the crew of the Riámi would not wear round by day, and at night all showed a predilection for the ‘Safar khoriyah,’ i. e. anchoring in some snug bay. Consequently the old tub, with knees and mast loose like a slaver’s, did not make Kokoto-ni, the usual departure point from Zanzibar Island, till 7 A. M. on January 8.

Kokoto-ni ‘(at or in) the pebbles,’ is an anchorage 18.30 direct geographical miles from, and north with 3 miles east of, Zanzibar City. Formed by a bight with a streamlet, and the Island of Tumbatu, with its little outliers, Manawamána and Popo (in Owen Moina and Benoth), this roadstead is rendered dangerous during the Azyab, or N. East monsoon, by a heavy rolling sea and a coral-bound lee-shore. The coast has the usual edging of sand, clear as crystal, and of bright green mangrove, whilst an inner belt of darker jungle defends a country, here, as everywhere around, prodigiously fertile, green, and monotonous. The interior is a mass of cultivation, manioc and sweet potato (Jezar) from Madagascar, superb mangoes and cocoas waving in the clear sea-breeze, and limes and oranges, the latter disposed, as by the Paraguayans, in long rows, which, at a distance, imitate the tea-field. Clove plantations adorn the uplands, and the giant Calabash (Adansonia digitata) stretches its stumpy, crooked arms over the clustering huts. The tree is at once majestic and grotesque; the tall conical column of spongy and porous wood, covered with a soft, glossy rind, which supplies half Africa with bast, will have a girth of forty to fifty feet, far exceeding the cedars of Lebanon, whilst the general aspect is that of a giant asparagus. Like the arbutus, some trees will be bare, others in leaf, and others in flower, all at the same season. When thickly clothed with foliage growing almost stalkless from the wood; topped with snowy blossoms, like the fairest and lightest of water-lilies, and hung about with four or five hundred gourds; ovals somewhat larger than a cocoa-nut, dressed in green velvet with the nap on, and attached by a long thin cord, like tassels which wave with every breath of the zephyr, its appearance is striking as it is novel. Nothing, in fact, after the negro can be more typically and distinctly African.

Escorted by Said bin Salim and his slave, we visited the village Mwándá. It is the normal collection of cajan-thatched huts, with wattle and dab walls, gathering round a little Mosque and grave-yard. There are no stone dwellings, but scatters of such hovels extend far and wide. The settlement was mostly tenanted by women who hid themselves, by children who ran away, and by slave-girls who squatted, combing and plaiting one another’s locks; these grinned merrily enough, having nought to fear. The faces were hideous to look upon, with black, coarse skins, scarred and seamed by small-pox; huge mouths, and rolling eyes. Not a few were lame and toothless, and the general dress was the ungraceful swaddle of blue, checked or indigo-dyed stuff. Presently we were addressed by an old man, carrying a spear, and attired in Arab fashion, of red cap, loin-cloth (Futah), and Tobe (Taub), or shoulder-scarf. Taking us for traders, who came to buy cocoa and cloves, he placed a Kitandah (cot) under the central calabash, the gossip-place of the village, and brought us cocoanut-water, which here takes the place of coffee. In vain we offered high prices for meat; geese, ducks, and fowls, however, were abundant.

After a short rest we set out northwards, to inspect the plantations. Most of the men were at work in their Mashamba; the weeds had been burned for manure, the primitive manner of restoring nutrition to the soil, and the peasant, with his rude implements, was smoothing the lowlands for paddy. Already the light showers of the Azyab had flooded the ground, and the stagnant stream which we forded was choked with rush and sedge. A ‘Tell,’ or dwarf rise, was occupied by a farm belonging to the late Sayyid; here we were again seated and supplied with mangoes. This fruit, curious to say, would never fall upon the Prince’s head, although his courtiers often suffered severe contusions—at least, so we were assured.

After a long walk, which crippled my naked arms and legs with sunburns, we returned to the shore, and Said complaining, with a visage like Falstaff’s ‘wet cloak ill-laid up,’ that never before had he endured such fatigue, we signalled the Riámi for a boat. It was five hours coming, the wind blew off shore, and we had some trouble in persuading certain Tumbatu men to carry off the party of six in a monoxyle, a single log of wood, propelled by a scarf. A few dates and a dollar sent them back happy, and the Riámi had used her time well in washing decks and taking in water.

The weather now set seriously against us. The thermometer fell some 5° (F.), and heavy showers, mostly in the morning, wetted us clean through, despite all precautions. Lightning from the N. West appeared; the ‘egg of the cloud’ showed the focus of electric matter, and tornados, exactly resembling those of the Guinea coast, made the crew down sail, and satisfy themselves with one knot an hour. They had a peculiar style of keeping watch; all sat up singing till 10-11 P. M., after which every man slept as unanimously. The only waker was poor Said, who with red eyes and peeling nose suffered crispations when the squalls came on. About 9 A. M. (January 10) we sighted for the first time Pemba, the Emerald Isle of these Eastern Seas; and after three days’ stumbling over 33 miles from Kokoto-ni, Pemba channel, with the hills of the Mrima clear on our left, appeared at 3 P. M. To the right rose the tree-grown banks, and the verdant coral-ledges, which have given a name to the Green Island of the Arabs. Except from the mast-head it is invisible at an offing of 12 miles, this forest-clump emerging from the blue and buoyant wave, and therefore it was neglected by the Periplus. In A. D. 1698 the bold buccaneer Captain Kidd here buried his blood-stained hoards of gold and jewels, the plunder of India and of the further Orient. The people have found pots of ‘nuggets,’ probably intended for buttons, in order that the pirate might wear his wealth. Thus it is that the modern skipper, landing at Madagascar, or other robber haunts of the older day, still frequently witnesses the disappearance of his brass buttons, whilst the edge of a knife resting upon his throat secures the quiescence essential to the rapid performance of the operation.

The complicated entrance to Chak-Chak, or Shak-Shak as the Arabs call it, the chief port, fort, and town, has that silent, monotonous, melancholy beauty, the loveliness of death, which belongs to the creeks and rivers of those regions. The air was pure and sparkling; a light breeze played with the little blue waves; the beach, wherever it appeared, was of the purest golden hue, creamed over with the whitest of foam; and luxuriant trees of the brightest green drooped from their coralline beds over a sea, here deeply azure, there verdigris coloured by the sun shining through it upon a sand-shoal. But animated nature was wanting: we heard not a voice, we saw no inhabitant—all was profoundly still, a great green grave. A chain of islets forms the approach to a creek, below all mangrove and black vegetable mud, which stains the water, and bears roots upsticking like a system of harrows; above on both sides are rounded swelling hillocks, crowned with the cocoa and the clove. We sailed about on various tacks, and near sunset we anchored in the outer port, four or five miles distant from the town. On a wooded eminence rose the white walls and the tall tower of Fort Chak-Chak[Chak-Chak], standing boldly out from its dark green background, and apparently commanded by higher land, nowhere, however, exceeding 150 feet, while the spars of an Arab craft peered above the curtained trees. With the distinctest remembrance of Indian rivers, my companion and I could not but wonder at the scene before us.

Early on the next morning we manned the Louisa, and rowed slowly through a gate, formed on the right by Ra’as Kululu, and on the left by a high plantation Ra’as Bannani. It led to a broad, deep basin, where two or three Sayas, small Arab vessels, not wishing to approach the town, lay at anchor. After a couple of hours, during which progress was of the mildest, we entered a narrow creek, bordered by a luxuriant growth of mangroves. The black and fœtid sea-ooze, softer than mud, which supports these forests of the sea, contrasts strangely with the gay green of their foliage, and the place was haunted by terns, grey kingfishers, and hawks of black and white robe, big as the ‘Ak-baba,’ and said to be game birds. Here and there a tall man paddled a tiny canoe, and an old slave woman went to catch fish with a body-cloth, used as a net: she suggested the venerable comparison of the letter S mounted on ‘No. 11.’ The old Arab geographers seem to have been struck by the piscatorial peculiarities of these coasts. El Idrisi (1st climate, 7th section) informs us that ‘the people supply themselves from the sea without craft or without standing upon the shore. They use, whilst swimming or diving, little nets which they themselves make of woven grass; they tie them to their feet, and by slip-knots and lashings held in their hands, they draw fast the snare when they feel that a fish has entered it. All this they do with exceeding art and with a cunning bred by long experience: they also teach land reptiles to drive their prey’—possibly the iguana.

The tide, which hereabouts rises from twelve to thirteen feet, was then rapidly ebbing. At high water large boats run up under the walls of Chak-Chak; during the ebb the creek within several yards of the landing-place is a quaking bog, which receives a man to his waist. After three hours of persistent grounding, and nearly despairing to reach our mark, a sharp turn showed us the fort almost above our heads: we disembarked and waded up to the landing-place.

Ascending the sea-slope, I was struck, even after Goa and Zanzibar, by the wondrous fertility of the land. All that meets the eye is luscious green; cocoas, jacks, limes, and the pyramidal mangoes grow in clumps upon the rises; the wild solanum with bright yellow apples, and the castor shrub, rich in berries, spread over the uncultivated slopes; excellent rice, of which the Island formerly paid tribute, clothes the lowlands, and the little fields bear crops of holcus and sesamum, vetches as Thur (Cajanus Indicus), Mung (Phaseolus radiatus), and Chana or Gram (Cicer arietinum), with manioc, and many species of garden-stuff and fruit-trees, especially oranges and citrons. The eternal humidity—páni jo ghano sukh, say the Banyans—unfavourable to human, fosters vegetable development in a luxuriance more oppressive than admirable. After a few minutes’ climb we entered Chak-Chak, which, like a Brazilian country-town, consists of one long narrow lane. It is formed by square huts of wattle and dab, raised upon platforms of tamped clay: each tenement has a ‘but’ and a ‘ben,’ and most are fronted by a deep verandah, where poultry, fruit, and stale fish are exposed for sale by many familiar faces hailing from Hindostan.

My first visit was to the Wali or Governor, Mohammed bin Nasif bin Khalaf. In his absence at Zanzibar, we were received by his brother Sulayman, who lay upon his bed shaking with fever: the house was like its neighbours, and the verandah was partly occupied by a wooden ship’s-tank. We then took refuge against the sun at the shed called Place of Customs, where we were duly welcomed, whilst cloves were being weighed by the slaves. The Collector of government dues was a nephew of Ladha Damha, this Pisuji was at the head of some ten Bhattias: they are readily distinguished by red conical fools’ caps, and by their Indian Dhotis, or loin-cloths. His reception was far more cordial than it would have been in his own land, where Banyans are by no means famous for hospitality to the Mlenchha, or outcaste. We determined him to be an exceptional man, but afterwards, on the coast, we received the same civilities from all the Hindu and almost all the Hindi (Moslem) merchants. Pisu reproached Saíd for not landing us last night, seated us on cots, and served upon a wooden tray sliced mango and pineapple, rice, ghee, and green tea. An old Sindi tailor, Fakir Mohammed, son of a petty officer who had served as a Turkish gunner in Yemen, brought a bottle, and invited us to carouse with ‘wuh safed,’ that white one—probably gin. Our refusal to taste it did us good service with the Sherif Mohammed, a Hazramaut man, educated in Sind, and chief of the 25 to 30 Indians who compose the little colony. We were visited by the Jemadar, Musa Khan, who commands a score of Baloch mercenaries, readily distinguished by close-fitting lips and oval heads in this land of muzzles and cocoa-nut skulls. They greatly admired our weapons, specially my basket-hilted Andrea Ferrara, the gift of an old friend, Archibald McLaren, and one young fellow volunteered to accompany us up country. The Wasawahili were the least civil; they heard that certain Muzungu Kafirs had visited their town, and came to stare accordingly.

The good Pisu sent for our casks, and had them filled from the Mto-ni, behind the fort. This streamlet, some 15 feet broad and armpit deep, supplies water far superior to that of the wells and the brackish produce of the sands near the anchorage ground. Finally, he accompanied us, with the chief notables, to the landing-place, and sent us off in his own boat, which he had loaded with rice and fruits.

Pemba is an irregular coralline bank, composed of some 15 or 20 smaller items, covered with the richest vegetable humus. It is, in fact, an archipelago growing up into an island. Like Zanzibar, it is a low bank perched upon the summits of submarine mountains, which rise from depths not yet fathomed. Its extreme length is 42 miles, from Ra’as Kigomathe (Kegomatchy of Owen), the N. West point in S. lat. 4° 47′, and Ra’as Msuka (Said Point), in S. lat. 5° 29′ 30″. The long narrow steep varies in breadth from 2 to 10 miles (Owen), between E. long. (G.) 39° 39′, and 39° 48′, to which 5′ must be added since Bombay[^[1]] and the Cape of Good Hope have been found to be placed that much too far west. Ra’as Kigomathe, the point nearest the mainland, is separated from it by Pemba Channel, here 19 to 20 miles broad, and the greatest width is 35 miles. The western sea-board, where calmer waters under a lea land favour the labours of the polypus, is evidently advancing rapidly, and here the coast-line is notably broken compared with that of Zanzibar and with its own eastern or windward coast. In this point it resembles Jutland, Iceland, and Norway, where the S. West, a prevalent wind, tears to pieces the occidental shores, and deposits the débris upon the leeward half. The reefs and shoals, branching in all directions, but especially westward, are still unexplored, and every ship that sounds does new work. The height of the Island nowhere exceeds 180 feet, and the soil is purely vegetable. The streamlets are not worth mentioning, and the general unimportance of the long narrow bank unfits it for representing the Menouthian depôt.

A strong current runs between Zanzibar and Pemba, carrying ships northwards sometimes at the rate of 50 miles per diem. The principal settlement, Chak-Chak, is built upon a deep inlet on the western coast, where the Island is narrowest. The distance is some 17 direct geographical miles (or 25 by course) north with easting from the southern Cape, and the approach is winding and difficult. The most objectionable part of the Green Isle is its climate. No man here is in rude health, laming ulcers on the legs exactly resembling syphilitic sores, stomach pains, and violent indigestions afflict new comers: hydrocele is a plague, and the population is decimated by small-pox, dumb agues, and bilious fevers.

In its palmy day many Portuguese, merchants and soldiers, settled at Pemba upon large plantations, and with the abundance of water and provisions, amongst which cattle are specified, consoled themselves for the insalubrity of the atmosphere. At the end of the sixteenth century, when that celebrated corsair the Amir Ali Bey had raised the coast, the ‘Moors’ of Pemba revolted against their Shaykh, and murdered the foreign settlers—men, women, and children. The chief, with a few fugitives, took refuge in Melinde, and was speedily restored to his own by the Captain-Major Thomé de Souza Coutinho, brother of the Viceroy of India. He was again expelled shortly after A.D. 1594; and this time he retired to Mombasah, became a Christian, and married a Portuguese orphan: he eventually visited India with D. Francisco da Gama, who also promised to restore him, and the promise seems to have been kept. In December, 1608, the Island was visited by Capt. Sharpey, en route to India, and the treacherous Europeans persuaded the ‘Moors’ to attack his crew, after inveigling them on shore by a show of hospitality. Hence the ‘villanies of Pemba’ became a proverb on the coast.

A steep path, a yellow streak on the dark green ground, leads up to the Fort, which, situated beyond the settlement, commands the creek and landing-place. It is evidently an old Portuguese building. The frontage is a loop-holed curtain of masonry, flanked on the right by a round tower—a mere shell—and on the left by a square turret, pent-housed, with cajan mats. A few iron guns, honeycombed to the core, lie around the walls; the entrance is dilapidated; and the place, now undergoing repairs, is like most ‘Forts’ in these regions, about as capable of defence as the castled crag of Drachenfels. Hearing the people of Pemba call it, as at Maskat, ‘Gurayza,’ evidently a corruption of Igreja, and now meaning a combination of fortress and jail, I inquired about Portuguese ruins, and heard of two deserted churches, in one of which a bit of steeple is still standing. The Lusitanians, in later times, long made the Green Isle one of their principal slave-depôts: even in 1822 their ships traded regularly to Chak-Chak. I did not visit the ruins, which are said to be distant one day’s march: there is nothing to interest man in the relics of the semi-barbarous European rule. The Island also boasts of a single mosque. The Pemba men pray at home, and they are said to pray little. The population is held to be half that of Zanzibar, upon less than two-thirds, perhaps only one-half, of the area; but this appears a considerable exaggeration.

CHAK CHAK FORT (PEMBA ISLAND).

Pemba supplies her bigger sister-isle with a little excellent ghee and poor rice. The principal exports are cocoas and cloves; and here, as every where along the coast, cowries are plentiful. Bullocks, reared on the island, cost from $6 to $10; sheep, brought from the mainland, $3 to $4; and goats, which are rare and dear, from $7 to $9. Cash is evidently not wanting. Fowls are sold at 20 to 23 for $1—half the price of Zanzibar,—and eggs are very cheap, two or three being procured for a pice. The people complain that this year all provisions are exceptionally dear. The Banyans, who make Pemba their head-quarters, demand high agio for small change, giving only 111 pice for the German crown, whereas 128 is the legal rate at the capital. They also regulate the price of provisions according to the Zanzibar market. They have different weights and measures—the Kaylah, for instance, is greater—and, as usual in these regions, they keep the gross amount of exports and imports a profound secret.

Our gallant captain of the beard—‘the Lord have mercy upon him for a hen!’—determined to doze away the day, and to pass a snug sleepy night, anchored in some quiet bight. His crew also, although living upon Jack fruit, and supplied with only two skins of fresh water, grumbled exceedingly when I ordered a δρομος νυχθημερος. For a whole day they had tacked about the creek and basin till the shades of evening fell, and force was required to keep the canvas aloft. Presently, when running out of Pemba, grave doubts and misgivings about the wisdom of the proceeding came over me as the moonless night fell like a pall, and, exaggerated by the dim twinkling of the stars, rose within biscuit-toss the silhouettes of islet and flat rock, whence proceeded the threatening sounds of a ‘wash.’ Soon, however, emerging from the reefs, we smelt sea air, and we felt with pleasure the throb of the Indian Ocean.

During the three days that followed our patience was sorely tried. The sky was now misty, hiding the shore, so that sometimes we went south instead of north; then the spitting deepened to heavy rain, whilst the thermometer stood at 83° (F.). The Azyab or N. East wind, high and contrary, blew great guns, and a strong current set clean against us. The combing sea, with waves raised some five feet, was most unpleasant during the long moonless nights: on this coast there are more shoals and coralline reefs than harbours, and the lee-shore, within a few yards of which we were periodically drifted, was steep to, with rocky banks and bars. Mariners rarely sail by night, except before a fair and steady wind, and in the open roadsteads they are ill-defended from the strong N. East monsoon. We long sighted the two high hummocks called Wasin Peaks, and we were compelled to ride at anchor off Gasi Bay, the strained old Riami creaking at every timber, and rolling gunwales under. Pleasant scenes were the rule. Mutton-livered Saíd, groaning and weeping, started up every half-hour during that ‘black night,’ and screamed with voice altered by violent flesh-quake, till he makes us all nervous as himself. The captain, sitting on the Zuli (deck), cried, Rih! Rih!—wind! wind!—asked what could be done, and more than once, as we were driven on towards a reef, definitively declared the Riami lost. The sailors, green and yellow with hard work and hunger, tacking out with the Barri (land breeze), and in with the Azyab, would not bale except under the stick. The iron boat sinking once, and twice snapping her painter in the long rolling sea, gave us abundant trouble. At last, as a thick cloud veiled Jupiter and Venus, a cry arose that she had again broken loose; and we resolved to make Mombasah, trusting that Tate would restore her. More than once we thought of landing, and of walking along the shore to our destination: for if all was unpleasant outside the ‘Beden,’ the inside, with its atmosphere of cockroaches, bilge water, and rotting wood, was scarcely more attractive. Hitherto, from the moment of our leaving England, the expedition had met with little but ill luck.

At length, on January 16th, after long and wistfully gazing, as the mist rose, at the three conical heads, which the Portuguese call ‘Corôa de Mombaça,’ and when almost despairing of reaching them, the wind suddenly became favourable, and we were driven round Ra’as Betani into the land-locked harbour, right joyful to cast anchor opposite English Point, and to pass the quiet night of which we had disappointed our crew at Pemba Island.

The run into Mombasah was truly characteristic of Africa. The men hailed us from afar with the query, ‘What news?’ We were unmercifully derided as Whites by the black nymphs, bathing in the costume of Camoens’ Nereids. And the sable imps, sunning themselves upon the white sand, shouted the free-and-easy Muzungu—‘Europeans!’

I was not a little astonished at the first sight of this ‘indomitable village,’ whose history is that of the whole East African coast. Can this paltry settlement have been the capital of the King of the Zing, concerning whom Arab travellers and geographers have written such marvels? Is this the place whose stubborn patriotism and turbulent valour rendered her for nearly two centuries a thorn in the side of the Portuguese? that gave them more trouble than all the 2000 miles of shore? that allowed herself to be burnt three times to the ground, and that twice succeeded in massacring an enemy whom she had failed to expel? Can this miserable village have produced heroes, the Samson-like Ahmad bin Mohammed; the generous and chivalrous Abdullah bin Ahmad, and Mubarak, whose daring valour displayed during the war against Sayyid Said, still lives in popular song? Of the second named a story is told, which might belong to the knightly days of Europe. During the siege of Lamu, where, by-the-by, he lent his shoulders as a scaling-ladder to his father’s soldiers, the young chief received a poulet from a fair friend, containing these words: ‘I hear that under our walls is a person named Abdullah; if he be the man I love, he will not remain so near me without claiming my hospitality!’ To hear was to obey. The Mazrui, taking his trusty sabre, proved himself capable of the perilous enterprise, and after returning to his father’s camp, he sent a slave to the governor with the simple message: ‘Last night I slept in Lamu, and right soon I will sleep in it with all my men.’

MOMBASAH FORT

CHAPTER II.
MOMBASAH OR MVÍTA.[^[2]]

‘Est autem urbs illa sita intra sinum quemdam in rupe præcelsâ et editâ. Fluctus cùm se ab introitu sinus incitant, in adversam frontem urbis incurrunt. Inde deducti introrsus penetrant et utrumque latus urbis alluunt ita, ut peninsulam efficiunt.’—Osorio, describing Mombasah.

From early ages the people of this inhospitable coast left untried neither force nor fraud, neither secret treachery nor open hostility, to hinder and deter Europeans from exploration. Bribed by the white and black ‘Moors’—Arab and Wasawahili—then as now monopolists of the interior trade, Vasco da Gama’s pilots attempted to wreck his ships. In later years the Banyans, becoming the chief merchants of this coast, excited against travellers the half-caste maritime races, as usual the worst specimens of the population; these in turn worked upon their neighbours, the sanguinary savages of the interior, who, in addition to a natural fear of everything new, cherish old traditions of the white man’s piracy and kidnapping. In 1826 the brig Mary Anne was assaulted near Berberah and her crew was massacred by the Somal at the instigation, according to Lieut. Wellsted (Travels in Arabia, chap. xviii.), of the Banyans, who certainly withheld all information by which the attack could have been prevented or repelled. In 1844 a combination, secretly headed by Jayaram, the Collector of Customs at Zanzibar, so effectually opposed Lieut.-Colonel Hamerton that, unable to hire a vessel on the Island, he crossed over to the Continent in a launch borrowed from the Sayyid and manned by his own boat’s crew. Now, however, the increased number and power of the European houses, the greater facility of communication, the presence of our ships in these ports, and the more settled state of the Dominion, have convinced Arabs, Banyans, and Wasawahili, that it is vain to kick against the pricks in European shape. Yet they yield unwillingly, knowing that exploration will presently divert their monopoly into other channels, and, quoting the Riwayat or rhymed prophecy, that sovereignty shall depart from them when the Franks’ first footstep shall have defiled the soil. Even in our time (1857) travellers should consider the countenance of the Sayyid’s government a sine quâ non, and unless marching in great force or prepared for universal bakhshish, they should never make their starting-point any port distant from head-quarters.

The town of Mombasah, still called ‘Mwita,’ meaning fight or battle, is mentioned in A.D. 1331 by the Shaykh Ibn Batuta, as a large place abounding in fruits, and peopled by a ‘chaste, honest, and religious race.’ Two centuries afterwards the site is thus described by the Colto e buon Luigi—as Camoens was termed by the amiable Tasso.

The isle before them stood so near the land,

that narrow was the strait which lay between;

a city situate upon the strand

was on the seaboard frontage to be seen:

with noble edifices fairly planned

as from the offing showed afar the scene;

ruled by a king for years full many famed,

the isle and city were Mombasah named.[^[3]]

In João de Barros and others we read attractive details of beautiful gardens, lofty towers, a harbour full of ships; of handsome men and of honourable women habited in silk robes and adorned with gold and jewels; of the ‘knights of Mombasah,’ which now can hardly show a head of horse, and of the ‘ladies of Melinde,’ where the plundering Gallas have left only heaps of ruins. The King, ‘for years full many famed,’ received his first Portuguese visitors with peculiar empressement, and with the kindly purpose of cutting Vasco da Gama’s throat, enticed him to land by promises to furnish wax, wheat, ambergris, ivory, and precious metals,[^[4]] and by sending samples of spicery—pepper, ginger, and cloves—apparently all imports, as Calicut Banyans and Christians of St Thomas were upon the spot. But when the great Captain’s ship weighed anchor to enter the port, she struck upon a shoal probably at the southern end of the channel formed by ‘Leven Reef Head’ and the mainland: the ‘Moors’ tumbled into their canoes, the Mozambique pilot took a header from the stern, and an ugly plot stood forth in its nakedness. To make certain, Da Gama of the ‘awful eyes’ extracted the truth from his Moslem captives by ‘heating lard and dropping it upon their flesh:’ unable, however, to revenge himself, he set sail for Melinde.

And here we may explain how arose the contempt and hatred which the coast has attached to the word Faranj, or Feringhee. The Orient became acquainted with Europe at a time when the Portuguese were slavers and robbers in the Lord’s name, when the Dutch were second-rate traders, and when the English were rank ‘saltwater thieves.’ Vasco da Gama did not hesitate to massacre all his prisoners, or to decorate his yard-arms with wretches suspended like the captives of ‘Sallie rovers.’ Albuquerque’s soldiers hewed off the hands and feet of women and children, the quicker to secure their rings and armlets. Torture and cruel death, especially wholesale burning, fell to the lot of Moslems and Pagans. In the seventeenth century even the commanders of the Hon. East India Company’s ships, according to Della Valle, committed robberies ashore and on the high seas: The ‘Grand Mogul’ regarded our people as a race ‘of dissolute morals and degraded religion’—tetræ belluæ, suis molossis ferociores.

In A.D. 1500 Mombasah yielded to D. Alvarez Cabral, and, three years afterwards, the Captain Ravasco settled its tribute. On August 13, 1505—events succeeded one another rapidly in those brave old times—D. Francisco de Almeyda, the first viceroy of Portuguese India, who had been gravely insulted by the turbulent citizens, attacked with his 20 ships, captured and burnt it. The Sultan was admitted to the honours of vassalship and tribute; stringent regulations were made, and the conquest having been placed in the first of the three provinces of Ethiopia and Arabia, with Mozambique as the general capital, the government was confided by the king, in A.D. 1508, to D. Duarte de Lemos. In 1516 Mombasah is described by Duarte Barbosa as a well-built, wealthy, and flourishing place, which exported honey, wax, and ivory. It was again attacked by D. Nuno da Cunha, who was bent upon avenging the insults offered to his allies, the chiefs of Zanzibar, Melinde, and Atondo. The Sultan defended himself stoutly, introduced into the city 5000 black archers, and armed a fort with cannon taken from Portuguese ships: the women and children were sent to the mainland, and a system of sorties and surprises was organized, which protracted the affair from November 14 to March 3, 1529. At length D. Nuno, after destroying the houses and cutting down the palm trees, set fire to the place, and burnt it to the ground. These active measures secured peace for some years. In 1586 the Turkish corsair, Ali Bey, persuaded Mombasah to place itself, like Makdishu, Ampaza, Lamu, Kelifi, and Brava, under the Sultan of Stambul. D. Duarte de Menezes, viceroy of India, sent from Goa a fleet of 18 ships, under Martim Affonso de Melo Bombeyro, who revenged the insult by burning Mombasah the third time.

Tradition asserts, contrary to received opinion, that the Conquistadores penetrated far into the interior, and common sense suggests that soldiers so adventurous would not confine themselves to the seaboard. The Wasawahili speak of a ruined castle on Njuira, a hill north of the Pangani river, and placed by M. Rebmann 160 miles from the ocean. At Chaga, a district west of Mombasah, whose apex is the well-known and much-vexed Kilima-njaro or Kilima-ngao, stone walls, a breastwork for cannon, and an image of a long-haired woman seated upon a chair and holding a child, are reported still to remain. The Wanyika, or ‘Desert people’ of the Mombasah Range, have preserved in their Kayas, or strongholds near Rabai Mku, certain images which they declare came from the west. According to Dr Krapf, these statuettes, called Kisukas, or little devils, are carried in war processions to encourage the combatants. No European has ever seen this ‘great medicine,’ nor has any Chief ever dared even to propose showing them to the mission: whenever a European evinced more pertinacity than was pleasing, he found the bushes upon his path bristling with bow and spear, and capped by the woolly mops of the sable Roderick Dhu’s clansmen.

‘And every tuft of broom gave life

To nigger warrior armed for strife.’

Iconolatry is unknown to these tribes, and the savages probably derived their Kisukas from some civilized race. According to Andrew Battel, of Leigh, the English captive at Angola (A.D. 1589), the Jagas, or Giagas,[^[5]] did not worship, but had small images in their towns, and a life-sized figure of a man called Quesango. As a rule, however, especially in the non-maritime regions, the negro’s want of constructiveness and of plastic power prevent his being an idolater in the literal sense of the word: he finds it more convenient to make a god of ‘grass or palm-leaves and broken pieces of calabashes, to which feathers of fowls are fastened by means of blood.’[^[6]]

The important depôt was again attacked in 1589 by a savage host from the south, called by contemporary historians, ‘Zimbas’[‘Zimbas’]:[^[7]] the city was taken by the savages; and after plunder and massacre, it was again occupied by Thomé de Souza Coutinho. In 1592, according to the Mombasah Chronicle, Shaho bin Misham, its last Shirazian Sultan, was succeeded by Ahmad the Shaykh of Melinde. Two years afterwards a fort was built by order of the Viceroy Matthias d’Albuquerque, and in 1596 D. Francisco da Gama re-established the Portuguese rule. If we may believe the Dominican monk João dos Santos, who was present during the war waged with the Monomotapa about the mines of Chicova, the conduct of the European foreigners was ‘outrageous and unreasonable,’ and it soon led to the usual consequences. The first deadly blow against the conqueror was struck by Yusuf bin Ahmad, alias Dom Jeronymo Chingoulia, the Nana Sahib of the Eastern Coast. A son of Ahmad, the first Melinde Sultan of Mombasah, he was sent at an early age to Goa, under the charge of Augustine monks, with orders to bring him up in the true religion; he was baptized in A.D. 1627, and, after writing a submissive letter to the Pope, he was permitted to return home, and was imprudently promoted to the chieftainship in August, A.D. 1630. The convert began by making Moslems eat pork, and by similar demonstrations of zeal. When all suspicions were laid at rest, Yusuf, no longer Jeronymo, collected 300 savages, entered the fortress in order to visit its commander, Pedro Leitão de Gamboa; and at a given signal stabbed the latter with his own hand, whilst his followers killed the captain’s wife and daughter, together with the priest, who was saying mass. The surviving Portuguese barricaded themselves for a week in the Augustine convent, but opened the doors when the young Sultan promised to spare their lives. He at once caused all the wretches to be arrowed, and the holy buildings to be profaned and destroyed. Brave as he was cruel, he defended during three months his city against a large fleet and armament sent by the Viceroy D. Miguel de Noronha, Count of Linhares; he beat off Francisco de Moura, and having captured two Portuguese vessels, he dismantled the citadel, burnt the city, destroyed the trees, and escaped with his ‘Pandis’ to Southern Arabia.

Fatal example! Mombasah thus learned that Europeans were easily conquered. The wasted island was re-occupied by the Portuguese, and the citadel was repaired in A.D. 1635. But after Hormuz and Maskat had fallen into the hands of the Persians and the Arabs, the Yurabi Imam of Oman, Sultan bin Sayf, besieged Mombasah about A.D. 1660, and, after five years’ investment, captured only the fort. His son and successor, Sayf bin Sultan, whose squadron was aided by the noble Arab tribe Mazrui, and by the dependent Wasawahili, again attacked the Portuguese, recovered the fort, massacred its defendants, and established an Arab governor. This decisive event took place on the 9th of Jemadi el Akhir, A. H. 1100 (December 14, 1698), a date celebrated in many a local ballad.

I have sketched the modern history of Mombasah when chronicling that of Zanzibar. Sayyid Said, wiser than the Portuguese, secured his conquest by the Tarquinian operation of striking down all the tallest growth. For our temporary protectorate Capt. Boteler is the best authority, and since A.D. 1837 the place has no name in the annals of the coast. The traveller, as well as merchant, must lament that we abandoned its cause; had England retained it, the interior would long ago have been opened to us. This lament may seem strange in the days when we propose to give up Gibraltar, as we have given up Java, Sicily, and the Ionian Islands—conquests hard won by blood and gold, and parted with for a song.

The harbour of Mombasah is spacious and land-locked; without exception, the best on the Zanzibar coast. Its magnificent basin is formed by one of those small coralline islands which, from Suez to Cape Corrientes, have long been the centres of commerce with peoples who, brutalized by barbarism, and incapable of civilization, would have converted mainland depôts into scenes of rapine and bloodshed. Of this chain the principal links, the Tyre, the Alexandria, and the Araduses of East Africa, are Masawah, old Zayla, Berberah—in the 16th century an islet—Makdishu, Lamu, Wasin, ancient Mtanga, Pemba, Zanzibar, Mafiyah, the original Kilwa, and Mozambique. The island is a mass of coralline, that forms scarps and dwarf cliffs, 45 to 60 feet high, everywhere except on the west, where there is a tongue of sand, and where the level ground is covered with the fertile humus of decayed vegetation; the shape is an irregular oval, about 3 miles long by 2½ broad, and this flat surface is capable of growing the richest produce. The soil, excessively permeable and bone-dry after a few hours following the heaviest downfalls, allows neither swamp nor bog. Eastward, or outside, there is good riding-ground defended on both sides by reefs; inside a double sea-arm moats the islet in every direction from the coast. This channel of coral-rag and oyster-rock, about 280 yards wide at the mouth, broadens northwards into a deep and secure basin, Captain Owen’s[^[8]] Port Tudor, so called from the officer who surveyed it, and westward of the islet is Port Reitz, a longer and a wider water. Vessels usually lie under the town opposite English Point, where they find safe anchorage. In the South-West monsoon, however, between May and September, square-rigged ships must be warped out, and in so doing they run some risk of being wrecked.

On the N. West Point, where a little battery commanded the passage, Mombasah Island is separated from the mainland by a shallow ford, and possibly this canal may be artificial. Here I should be inclined to place the New Fosse[^[9]] of the Periplus, and to identify, as do Vincent and Stuch, the Pyralaon Islands, with Pemba, Zanzibar, and Mafiyah. M. Guillain, by a careful calculation of distances, would transfer the site further north to the natural channel between Patta, Mandra, Lamu, and the mainland. But whilst errors of numerals are easily made, and readily copied in manuscripts; and whilst mistakes of distance can easily be accounted for, it is hard to believe that the Phœnician, Egyptian, and Greek merchants would have neglected the finest harbour and the best site for trade upon the whole Azanian shore. Moreover, there is nothing in the text to prevent the Pyralaon Islands being those off the Benadir, and the Fosse being about the modern ford of Mkupa on the west of the Island of Mombasah.

Said went on shore as the anchor ran out, and presently returned, accompanied by Lakhmidas Thakurdas, the Banyan Collector of Customs, with a civil message from the Jemadar, or Fort Commandant. Other visitors were Hari, a young Bhattia, speaking English learned at Zanzibar, and a certain Rashid bin Salim, a captain’s clerk, whose son is commanding a Kisawahili caravan in the Ukamba-ni country. With them we landed at a natural jetty in the N. Eastern front of the town, and where the dents of cannon-balls mark the position of a battery. Hence we ascended the cliff by a flight of steps in a dark dwarf tunnel, which is a reminiscence of the English. Further to the N. West is the wharf, constructed in 1825 by Lieut. Emery, and near it vessels generally lie. The tunnel opens upon the Mission House, a double-storied box of coarse masonry; the ground-floor belongs to Sayyid Said, and Shangora, the Msawahili ‘care-taker,’ duly supplied the key. To the right and left were other similar tenements, all more or less dilapidated, and the S. Eastern point was occupied by a small Custom House painfully whitewashed.

We are now in the Gavana (i. e. Governo), at present the Arab town, as opposed to the Mji wa Kale, Harat El Kadimeh, the ‘old quarter,’ the Black Town of the Portuguese. The site of the former is a dwarf rise at the S. Eastern and seaward edge of the Island, and it faces to the N. East, where over the pure blue channel orchards and verdure and wells of pure water commend the mainland as a villeggiatura. The form of the settlement is a parallelogram running N. West to S. East, and it was separated from the Black Town by a wall 10 to 12 feet high. This, under the Mazrui Shaykhs, was repaired and provided with a few bastions; between the Gavana and the citadel, however, a defensive work was not judged necessary, and now—an excellent sign—the rampart is rapidly falling to ruins. Here are the tombs of the local heroes who made Mombasah a historic name, and under a shed repose the remains of the Mazara governors, beginning with Mohammed bin Usman. The tombs are of masonry, and are distinguished by bearing epitaphs, which are somewhat in the style of prayers recited before the graves of Walis at Meccah and El Medinah. Amongst them is the sepulchre of Khuwaysah bint Abdillah, a woman apparently with a soul, for Allah is begged, to ‘make her home Paradise, with the best of its inmates.’

The materials of the Gavana are brown thatch huts, clustering round a few one-storied, flat-roofed boxes of glaring lime and coral rag, equally rude within and without. On the N. West lies the ‘native’ half, which prolongs the Arab quarter beyond the enceinte; this suburb is wholly composed of sun-burned and wind-blackened hovels, forming a labyrinth of narrow lanes. Outside the faubourg clusters a thicketty plantation of cocoa and fruit trees; here was the favourite skirmishing-ground between the Sayyid’s troops and the Mazrui defenders of the city. Mombasah is, as far as Nature made her, pleasing and picturesque, but man has done his best to spoil her work. A glorious ‘bush,’ a forest of tall trees, capped by waving palms, laced with llianas, and studded with shady mangoes, thick guavas, and fat baobabs, here forming natural avenues, there scattered as in a pleasure-ground, overspreads the vicinity of the town, whilst the more distant parts to the West, S. West, and N. West, are dense wild growths, virgin, as it were, and still sheltering the monkey and the hog, the hyæna and the wild cat. The presence of man is known only by some wretched hut, or by a dwarf Shamba-plot of meagre cultivation.

We inquired for the tomb of the Resident, Lieut. John James Reitz, who died whilst exploring the Pangani river, and was buried here in 1823. The site was once a church, but it has been turned into a cattle-yard by the Banyans, and now it enjoys the name of Gurayza ya Gnombe (bullock church). Besides some fine old masonry-revetted wells, still supplying the best water, the only traces of the Portuguese and the ‘twenty churches of Mombasah’ are ruins of three desecrated fanes, especially the Gurayza Mkuba (great church), the Augustine convent which lies in the north-eastern part of the Gavana. It is not to be compared for interest with the Jesuit remains upon the Rio de São Francisco. The people no longer show, as in 1824, the heap of masonry under which, says Boteler (ii. 1-20), they had buried the Moslems who fell during the second massacre of the Portuguese. I did not see the pillar or obelisk and the ruined fort to the S.S. East of the citadel, shown in Captain Owen’s chart. The Gurayza Mdogo is near the Augustine convent, and has now all the semblance of a dwelling-house. The battery or citadel, built by the Portuguese in 1594, and repaired in 1635, has been so much altered that it is now an Arabo-Msawahili construction. Its position is excellent, outside and S. East of the Gavana, pointing to the N. East, with complete command, at a distance of 600 fathoms, over the narrow northern entrance, and wanting only a reform in the batteries à fleur d’eau, and clearing out the interior of sheds and forage, to be a match for all the fleets of Arabia. Originally a quadrangle, some 120 yards square, with 4 bastions facing the cardinal points, it was sunk below the level of the coralline rock, which thus forms the footing of the walls, and which supplies a broad, deep moat. According to the Mombasah chronicle, the stones were brought ready cut from Portugal: the phrase is ‘Do Reino,’ which Capt. Owen has rendered ‘from Rainu,’ and elsewhere is commemorated ‘The Sultan of Rainu.’ The S.S. Western is the strongest side, whence a land attack might be expected: the other flanks are rich in dead ground, and the N.N. West front protects the Gavana. My sketch of the north-eastern face, taken from the Mhoma-ni Shamba, on the opposite side of the creek, shows a picturesque yellow pile, with tall, long, and buttressed curtains, which appear slightly salient, enclosing towers studded with, perpendicular loopholes; three tiers of fire opposite the entrance to the northern harbour; a place d’armes; a high don-jon with a giant flag-staff, conspicuous for 5 or 6 miles from the south, and sundry garnishings of little domes and luxuriant trees, some even growing out of the wall cracks.

Hearing that strangers are admitted to the Fort—Mrs Rebmann has often visited it—I proceeded to the head-quarters of the Jemadar. Arrived at the land gate leading to the inner Barzeh or vestibule, my attention was directed to the Portuguese inscription before alluded to. It is half defaced by the Arabs, but this is of the less consequence as copies have been published by Captains Owen and Guillain.[^[10]] At the angles of the western and southern bastions are also scutcheons in stone bearing the names Baluarte São Felippe and Baluarte Alberto. That to the north was called Baluarte São Matthias (from Matthias de Albuquerque), but here, as on the south side, the inscriptions have disappeared, probably by the fire of the enemy. A sentinel at the gate waved his hand and cried, Sir! Sir! (go! go!); but I persisted in sending for the Jemadar Tangai, who took my hand and led me towards a shed of leafy branches, some 15 paces outside the Fort. Here, he assured me, the Sayyid himself used to faire anti-chambre; but I could see only hucksters and negroes. We parted in high dudgeon, nor did we ever become friendly. Saíd bin Salim, who during this scene had remained below and afar off, showed us the chief mosque—there were eight when Lieut. Emery visited the town[^[11]]—and a formless mass of masonry, which marks the last resting-place of some almost forgotten heroes.[^[12]]

The climate of the Island is hotter, healthier, and drier than that of Zanzibar. The rains begin with storms in early April, or before the setting in of the S. West monsoon. They are violent in May, and from that time they gradually decrease. Between December and March there are a few showers, for which the cultivator longs; and, as may be imagined in an island ever subject to the sea-breeze, the dews are exceptionally heavy. The people suffer little from dysentery and fever: Europeans, however, complain that they are never free from the latter. The endemic complaint is a sphagadenic ulcer upon the legs and parts most distant from the seat of circulation. Here, as in Abyssinia, in Yemen, in the Hejaz, and at Jerusalem, the least scratch becomes an ugly wound, which will, if neglected, destroy life. The cause may be found in the cachectic and scorbutic habit induced by the want of vegetables and by brackish water; the pure element is, indeed, to be found in the old wells beyond the town and on the mainland; but the people save trouble by preferring the nearer pits, where water percolates through briny coralline. The town has suffered severely from epidemics, small-pox, and what strangers call the plague. The citizens still remember the excessive mortality of 1818, 1832, and 1835. At Mombasah I heard nothing about the curious influence which the climate is said to exercise upon cats, causing a sandy-coloured fur to be exchanged for ‘a coat of beautiful short white hair’; and producing, according to others, complete baldness, like the Remedio dogs of the Brazil and the Argentine Republic.

Mombasah, as has been seen, trades with the Wanyika for copal, with the people of Chaga and Ukamba-ni for ivory, and with the inner tribes generally for hippopotamus’ teeth, rhinoceros’ horns, cattle, cereals, and provisions. Slaves are brought from Zanzibar, natives of the country about and south of Kilwa being preferred. The imports are chiefly cottons, glass, beads, and hardware. There is no manufacturing industry, except a few cloths, hand-made in the town. Besides Harar, Mombasah is the only tropical African city which boasts an indigenous coinage. During the wars with Sayyid Said, the Mazrui chief, finding a want of small change, melted down a bronze cannon, and converted it into pieces a little larger than our six-pence. The bit, which bears on the obverse the name of Mombasah, whilst the reverse assures the owner that it is ‘money,’ was forcibly circulated, and the value was established at an equivalent to the measure (Kibabah) of Maize. Since the fall of the Mazara this purely conventional coin has fallen into disuse, and I was unable to find specimens of it.

CHAPTER III.
VISIT TO THE KISULODI-NI MISSION HOUSE.

Tremolavano i rai del sol nascente

Sovra l’onde del mar purpuree e d’oro,

E in vesti di zaffiro il ciel ridente,

Specchiar parea le sue bellezze in loro.

D’Africa i venti fieri e d’Oriente,

Sovra il letto del mar prendean ristoro.—Tassoni.

Leaving directions with Lakhmidas to land and lodge our cockroach-gnawed luggage, and deputing Saíd bin Salim, supported by our two Portuguese servants and his three slaves, to protect it, we set out on the morning after our arrival to visit M. Rebmann of the ‘Mombas Mission’ at Kisulodi-ni, his station. Before the sun gained power to destroy the dewy freshness of dawn, we slowly punted up the northern sea-arm which bounds the Mombasah islet: in our heavy ‘dau’—here all the lesser craft are so called—manned by two men and a small boy, we justified the stern Omar’s base comparison for those who tempt the sea, ‘worms floating upon a log.’ Whilst threading the channel our attention was attracted by groups of market people, especially women, who called to be ferried across. On the part of our crew the only acknowledgment was an African modification of Marlow Bridge, far-famed amongst bargees. Sundry small settlements, bosomed in thick undergrowth, relieved by brabs, cocoas, and the W-shaped toddy-tree, appeared upon each ‘adverse strand.’ After a two miles’ progress, lame as the march of civilisation at S’a Leone, we entered Port Tudor, a salt-water basin, one of the canals of Mombasah Bay, about two miles broad, and in depth varying from one to fifteen fathoms. Broken only by the ‘Rock of Rats,’ and hedged on both sides by the water-loving mangrove, it prolongs itself towards the interior in two tidal river-like channels for about ten miles, till stopped by high ground. The northern is named ‘Water of the Wakirunga,’ and the north-western ‘Water of the Rabai,’ from tribes owning the banks. Captain Owen has christened them respectively William Creek and River Barrette, after the officers who aided in his survey. Similarly, Port Reitz, to the south-west, projects a briny line called ‘Water of Doruma’—the region which it drains—and receiving the Muache, a sweet rivulet that flows from uplands 20 to 30 miles from the coast. Such in nature is the Tuaca, or Nash river, which defaces our maps. It is a mere confusion with Mtu Apa, the ‘River Matwapa’ of Captain Owen, a village and a little runnel five miles north of Mombasah. Lieut. Emery mentions the ‘hamlet of Mtuapa, situated at the entrance of a small river, which runs about sixteen miles into the country.’ Like the Cuavo, or great ‘Quiloa river,’ a salt-water inlet receiving during the rainy season the surface drainage of a seaward slope, the ‘Tuaca’ becomes a noble black streak, dispensing the blessings of intercourse and irrigation athwart three inches of white paper. The presence of such rivers must always be suspected: they would long ago have fundamentally altered the social condition of the interior. We may remark the same of Ptolemy’s three great Arabian streams, which could have existed only in the imagination of travellers.

As we advanced up the Rabai Water the sea arms shrank, and the scenery brightened till we felt that any picture of this gorgeous and powerful nature must be comparatively grey and colourless. A broken blue line of well-wooded hills, the Rabai Range, first offsets of the Coast Ghats, formed the background. On the nearer slopes, westward, were the rude beginnings of plantations, knots of peasants’ huts hove successively in sight, and pale smoke-wreaths, showing that the land is being prepared for the approaching showers, curled high from field and fell. Above was the normal mottled, vapoury sky of the rainy zone, fleecy mists, opal-tinted, and with blurred edges, floating on milk-blue depths, whilst in the western horizon a purple nimbus moved up majestically against the wind. Below, the water caught various and varying reflections of the firmament: here it was smooth as glass, there it was dimpled by the pattering feet of the zephyrs, that found a way through the hill-gaps, and merrily danced over the glistening floor. Now little fish, pursued by some tyrant of the waters, played duck and drake upon the surface: then larger kinds, scate-shaped, sprang five or six feet into the air, catching the sun like silver plates. On both sides the wave was bounded by veritable forests of the sea. The white mangrove affected the unflooded ground; the red species (Rhizophora Mangle, Linn.) rose unsupported where solidly based, but on the watery edge it was propped, like a Banyan tree in miniature, by succulent offsets of luscious purple and emerald green, so intricate that the eye would vainly unravel the web of root and trunk, of branch and shoot. Hence, doubtless, the name Aparaturie, or Apariturier, of the old French travellers, from parere, because the tree reproduces itself like mankind before split into Adam and Eve. Clusters of parasitical oysters adhered edgeways to the portions denuded by the receding tide; the pirate-crab sat in his plundered shell, whilst the brown newt and rainbow-tinted cancers, each with solitary claw, plunged into their little hiding-holes, or coursed sidling amongst the harrow-work of roots, and the green tufted upshoots binding the black mass of ooze. These are the ‘verdant and superb, though unfruitful, trees’ of the old Portuguese navigator, which supply the well-known ‘Zanzibar rafters.’ Various lichens sat upon the branch forks, and tie-tie, or llianas, hung like torn rigging from the boughs. Here and there towered a nodding cocoa, an armed bombax (silk-cotton tree), or a ‘P’hun’-tree, with noble buttressed shaft and canopied head of leek-green, glinted through by golden beams. Fish-hawks, white and brown-robed, soared high in ether. Lower down, bright fly-catchers hunted the yellow butterflies that rashly crossed from bank to bank; the dove coo’d in the denser foliage; the yellow vulture, apparently keeping a bright look-out, perched upon the topmost tree-crest overhanging the shoal water which lined the sides; the small grey kingfisher poised himself with twinkling wings; the snowy paddy-bird stood meditating upon the margin of the wave, while sober-coated curlews and sandpipers took short sharp runs, and stopped to dive beak into the dark vegetable mud.

After seven hours, or ten miles, of alternate rowing, sailing, and pushing through pelting rain and potent sunbeams, we reached, about mid-day, the pier—a tree projecting from the right bank over the miry graves of many defunct mangroves. Our boat, stripped of sail, oars, and rudder, to secure her presence next morning, was made fast to a stump, and we proceeded to breast the hills. We began with rolling ground, sliced and split by alternate heat and moisture, thickly grown with tall coarse grass, sun-scorched to a sickly tawny brown, and thinly sprinkled with thorny trees. Amongst the latter I recognized the ‘Gabol’-mimosa of Somaliland, whose long sharp needle, soft whilst young, but dry, hard, and woody when old, springs from a hollow filbert-like cone.

Another mile brought us to the first ascent of the Rabai hills. The pitch of the fell was short but sharp, and the path wound amongst boulders, and at times under palms and clumps of grateful shade. On the summit appeared the straggling lodges of the savages, pent-housed sheds of dried fronds, surrounded by sparse cultivation, lean cattle, and vegetation drooping for want of rain. The desert people were all armed, being in terror of the Wamasai, the natural enemies of their kind. None, however, carried guns, the citizens of Mombasah having strictly prohibited the importation of powder; a wise precaution which might be adopted by more civilized races upon the West African coast. Amid cries of Yambo!—a salutation which recalled dim memories of Mumbo Jumbo—especially from that part of the community termed by prescriptive right the fair—questions as to whether our bundle contained provisions, and the screams of lean-ribbed children, we pursued our road under the grateful cover of a little wood, and then over ridgy ground where a scattered village, shortly to be wasted by the Kimasai spear, was surrounded by the scantiest cultivation. At the end of a five-mile walk we entered the Mission House, introduced ourselves, and received from Mr and Mrs Rebmann the kindest welcome. They were then alone, M. Deimler, who had lived with Mr Isenberg in Abyssinia, having left them three days before in H. M.’s ship Castor, the late Commodore Trotter. We afterwards saw the latter at Zanzibar.

The Kisulodi-ni Mission House[^[13]] at Rabai Mpia appeared to us in these lands a miracle of industry. Begun about 1850 by Messrs Rebmann and Erhardt, it was finished after some two years of uncommonly hard work. The form is three sides of a hollow square, completed with a railing to keep poultry from vagrancy, and the azotea, or flat roof, is ascended by an external ladder; the material is sandstone, clay-plastered and white-washed; mangrove rafters form the ceiling, and Mvuli planks the doors and shutters. It has, however, its inconveniences, being far from that source of all comfort, the well, and beplagued with ants—the little red wretches are ubiquitous by day, and by night overrunning the clothes, nestling in the hair, and exploring nose and ears without a moment’s repose, they compel the inmates to sleep with pans of water supporting the couch legs. We enjoyed sundry huge ‘sneakers’ of tea, and even more still the cool, light, refreshing air of the heights, and the glorious evening, which here, unlike ‘muggy’ Zanzibar, follows the heavy showers. The altitude by B. P. proved to be 750 feet, not 1200 to 2000, as reported.

The servants, most grotesque in garb and form, gathered to stare at the new white men, and those hill-savages who were brave enough to enter a house stalked about, and stopped occasionally to relieve their minds by begging snuff or cloth. One of the attendants had that in his face and manner which suggested the propriety of having a revolver ready. ‘Do not mind him,’ said Mrs Rebmann, ‘he is a very dear friend,—one of our oldest converts.’ ‘Yes,’ pursued her husband, ‘Apekunza was mentally prepared for Christianity by a long course of idiocy, poor fellow!’ We were somewhat startled by the utter simplicity of the confession when it was explained to us that the convert Apekunza, whom Dr Krapf calls Abbe Gunja, had, as often happens to Africans, been driven to distraction by the loss of all his friends and relatives. M. Rebmann also related to me in pathetic terms the death of the mechanic missionary, Johannes Wagner, a youth who, suffering from typhus, was very properly, but in vain, supplied with abundant stimulants, therefore the Arab version of the event was Sharrabúhu Khamr kasír—sár sakrán—mát wa Jehannum (they gave him much strong liquor—he got drunk—died, and went to Gehenna). To compare the edification of the people round the Christian death-bed, as set forth in the Missionary Intelligencer, was not a little suggestive of the delusions in which even honest men can live.

At a conference with the secretaries of the Church Missionary Society in London, Major Straith and the Rev. Mr Venn had intrusted me with an open letter to their employé, dated Sept. 30, 1856, giving him leave of absence in case he decided to accompany the East African expedition at the expense of the latter. They had neglected to forward a copy, but M. Rebmann had received a second communication, which he did not before produce. His earliest impulse was evidently to assist in carrying out the plans which had been first formed by the ‘Mombas Mission,’ and personally to verify the accuracy of the map, then so loudly and violently criticised, now gaining credit every year. But presently cool reflection came. He was not in strong health; he had, perhaps, seen enough of the interior; and, possibly, after a few conversations he thought that we relied too much on the arms of flesh—sword and gun. The home instructions were, ‘The Committee have only to remark that they entirely confide in you, as one of their missionaries, that wherever you go you will maintain all the Christian principles by which you are guided; that should you see fit to go with the expedition your experience and knowledge of the language may prove very valuable; while you may also obtain access to regions and tribes where missionary enterprise may be hereafter carried on with renewed vigour.’ This did not quite suit us, who had been pledged by Lieut.-Colonel Hamerton to avoid ‘Dutchmen’ and proselytizing. Briefly, M. Rebmann did not accompany us. A few weeks afterwards we met him again at Zanzibar, whither he had been driven by the plundering Wamasai in February, 1857. His passion for the ‘wunderbar’ had not abated, and he told us impossible legends about vast forests and other mythical features, near the Nyassa, southern or Zambezean Lake. During the years which he had spent in the Wanyika country he had never studied its language; but when driven from it, he immediately applied himself to Kinyika. An honest and conscientious man, he had yet all the qualities which secure unsuccess. He was the last of the ten members of the hapless Mission: all of them were attacked by bilious remittents a few weeks after commencing their labours; several had died, and the others had sought less dangerous fields for labour, and some possibility of doing something in the spiritual way. That it has been highly successful, geographically speaking, none can doubt. The short trips into the interior, and the long conversations with the natives, duly published by Messrs Krapf, Rebmann, and Erhardt, gave an impulse to East African exploration utterly unknown before their day. And as the recent valuable labours of Messrs Wakefield and New prove, the ‘Mombas Mission’ is not likely to derogate from its former fame.

We had proposed for ourselves a short excursion inland from Mombasah; but everything combined to oppose the project. The land was parched, provisions were unprocurable, the robber tribes were out, and neither guides nor porters would face the plundering parties then approaching the town. Indeed, it is to be feared that the entrance to Chaga, Kilima-njaro, and the hill country around will now be closed to travellers for many a year. Caravans dare not risk a contest with professed plunderers; and hereabouts a successful raid always leads to sundry repetitions. Such is the normal state of East Africa, from the Red Sea to the Cape. The explorer can never be sure of finding a particular road practicable: a few murders will shut it for a generation, and effectually arrest him at the very threshold.

We had no object during a mere ‘trial trip,’ either to fight our way, or to pave it with gold. Our course was to economize life and money for the great task of exploring the Lake Regions. This was duly explained by me to the Royal Geographical Society, and no African traveller would have required the explanation. But a certain Herr Augustus Petermann, of Gotha, could not resist the temptation of taunting me with having hesitated to face dangers through which the missionaries had passed, ‘weaponed only with their umbrellas.’ This gentleman from Germany had visited England, and had created for himself the title of ‘Physical Geographer to the Crown’: when, however, no salary was the result, he returned to his native land, declaring that the Crown must take its geography without physic. His style of settling geographical questions, for instance in the ‘Skizze’ before alluded to (note 1, chap. v.), seems to be simply striking a mean between the extremes of the disputants. The process reminds one of a Bombay savan, locally famed, who, having collected every observation published upon the disputed longitude of that port, added them all, divided them by the number of the items, and produced his meridian. As a reward for Herr Petermann’s ‘zealous and enlightened services as a writer and cartographer in advancing geographical science,’ that is to say, persistent book-making and map-drawing, he, and not Mr Alexander Findlay, received, in 1867, the Founder’s medal of the Royal Geographical Society; and I can only say that in this case the gift has gone cheap, and has been easily gained, as what is called in familiar French ‘un crachat.’

Unlike the traveller, the merchant always commands an entrance for his goods: if one line be shut up, another forthwith opens itself. Such we found this year to be the case at Mombasah; the western country has suddenly been closed to Arabs and Wasawahili; the north-western has become as unexpectedly practicable. On January 19 (1857) returned the van of a large trading party, which had started for the interior in September last. It was composed of about 200 men—Arabs, Wasawahili, and slaves, of whom 40 bore provisions, rice and maize, pulse, sugar, and tobacco, whilst 150 armed with muskets carried packs to the value of $3000 in ‘Merkani’ (American domestics), sheetings, longcloths, and other stuffs; green, white, and spotted beads, knives, tin (batí); brass wires, and small chains, with stores and comforts for the journey. After 19 days of actual marching, and sleeping out 24 nights, they reached Kitui, the farthest point visited by Dr Krapf in 1849, and thence they dispersed through Ukamba-ni and Kikuyu, its north-western province, to purchase ivory. The latter article sold per Farsalah (35 lbs.) for 88 cubits of cotton cloth, probably worth at Zanzibar 11 German crowns and a small merchant could thus afford to being back from 1400 to 1500 lbs.

I wrote down a list of their marches[^[14]] and stations, carefully comparing the accounts of several travellers. Ukamba-ni was described to me as a country rich in game, whose rivers were full of hippopotamus; with gazelles, jungle-cattle, and ‘wild camels’ (giraffes) in the plains, and in the bush lions and leopards, elephants, and the rhinoceros, which the Arabs here call ‘El Zurraf,’ and describe to be very fierce. The tribes are subject to head men, whose influence extends over a few miles: these chiefs must be propitiated with cloth and beads, for which they return safe conduct and provisions. At Kikuyu the caravan found a royalet, Mundu Wazeli, whose magical powers were greatly feared. The people, a semi-pastoral and hospitable race, willingly escorted the strangers. They are braver than the Wanyika, and they effectively oppose the Wamasaa, when invading their country to drive the Galla cattle. The Wakámbá claim blood-relationship with the Wakwafi and the Wagálla, who, it must be remembered, speak an Arabic dialect. All spring from the three sons of a venerable keeper of cattle, Mkwáfi the senior, Mgálla, and Mkámbá: the legend seems invented to account for the inveterate blood-feud between the cousin tribes. When the founders had inherited their father’s property, they had been cautioned against robbing wild honey, and they were told, as in the Crystal Palace, ‘Never kill a Bee.’ Mkámbá, apparently having a sweet tooth, attacked a wild hive, and had the misfortune to see all his cattle rush violently to the forests, where in time they became ‘buffaloes’ and antelopes. He naturally robbed his second brother, who, in turn, robbed the senior, who retorted by robbing the junior, and so forth till the present day. The climate is good, water abounds, and provisions are cheap. The honey is ‘white as paper’; sugar-cane, manioc, holcus, and tobacco are everywhere cultivated by the women; poultry is plentiful, and goats cost 8, while cows fetch 24 cubits of cotton cloth. The beasts of burden are asses and a few camels. The return road was rendered dangerous by the Gallas and the Wamasai, who both harry Ukam-ba-ni, but who did not dare to attack so large a body armed with guns. The caravan marched from sunrise till the afternoon, halting about half an hour after two hours’ walking, the stages being mostly determined by water. Every night they surrounded themselves with a corral, or rude abbatis, and they lighted huge fires against the wild beasts. I did not hear that any of the party died. My informants could tell me nothing concerning the giant snow-mountain, Ndur-Kenia,[^[15]] that exceptional volcano, still active, when distant 6° from the sea, which would postulate a large lacustrine region, possibly the Baringo or Behari-ngo. They had never heard of the Tumbiri or Monkey river, flowing to the N. West; of the direct communication with the Upper Nile, or of other geographical curiosities whose existence the study of the interior during the last few years has either confirmed or annulled. Yet they were acute and not incurious men. One of them, Mohammed bin Ahmad, had kept a journal of his march, carefully noting the several stages. The late M. Jomard, President of the French Geographical Society, had been informed (and misinformed) that an annual caravan of ‘red people,’ from the neighbourhood of Mombasah, carried beads to buy ivory on the Nile, about N. lat. 3°. He laid down the length of the journey at two to three months. The Arabs knew nothing of the matter.

Nothing even among the Somali Bedawin can be wilder than the specimens from Ukamba-ni; these Warimangao,[^[16]] as the people of Mombasah call them, the ‘sons’ of the chief Kivoi, that danced and sang the Nyunbo or song of triumph in the streets of Mombasah. It was a perfect picture of savagery. About 50 blacks, ruddled with ochre, performed the Zumo (procession); men blowing Kudu-horns, or firing their muskets, and women ‘lullalooing.’ They sat with us for some hours drinking a sherbet of Ngizi, or molasses extracted from cocoa-tree toddy, and the number of gallons which disappeared were a caution. The warriors of the tribe, adorned with beads on the necks, loins, and ankles, were armed with the usual long bows and poisoned arrows, spears or rather javelins, knobsticks for striking or throwing; knives and two-edged swords of fine iron, the latter a rude imitation of the straight Omani blade, of which I afterwards saw specimens upon the Congo river. Some had shock heads of buttered hair, wondrous unsavoury, and fit only for door-mats; others wore the thatch twisted into a hundred little corkscrews; their eyes were wild and staring, their voices loud and barking, and all their gestures denoted the ‘noble savage’ who had run out of his woods for the first time. They were, however, in high spirits. Before last year (1857) no Arab had visited their country: trading parties from Ukamba-ni sold ivory to the Wanyika for four times round the tusk in beads, and these middlemen, after fleecing those more savage than themselves, retailed the goods at high profits to the citizens. The Wakamba of the coast are, of course, anxious to promote intercourse between Mombasah and their kinsmen of the interior, and thus the road, first opened at the imminent risk of life, by the enterprising Dr Krapf, has become a temporary highway into the interior of Eastern Intertropical Africa—a region abounding in varied interest, and still awaiting European exploration. But let not geographers indulge in golden visions of the future! Some day the Arabs of Mombasah will seize and sell a caravan, or the fierce Wamasai or the Gallas will prevail against the traders. Briefly, no spirit of prophecy is needed to foresee that the Kikuyu line shall share the fate of many others.

A report prevalent in Mombasah—even a Msawahili sometimes speaks the truth—that the Mission House had been attacked by the savages, and the march of an armed party from the town, showing a belief in their own words, hurried us up to Kisulodi-ni, on Sunday, January 18. The rumour proved to be false, but it was a shadow forethrown by coming events: as M. Rebmann showed certain velléités for martyrdom, I insisted that his wife, an English woman, should be sent down to Mombasah, and we had the satisfaction to see the boxes packed. This second visit added something to our knowledge of the country. The Ghaut, or Coast Range, which has no general but many partial names, as Rabai, Shimba, and others, varies in height from 700 to 1200 feet, and fringes the shore from Melinde to the Panga-ni river. Distant but a few miles from a sea-board of shelly coralline, it shows, like Madagascar, no trace of the limestone formation, which forms the maritime region of Somaliland. These hills are composed of sandstones, fine and coarse, red-yellow and dark brown, with oxide of iron; the soil, as usual in Western Intertropical Africa, is a ‘terrier rouge,’ as Senegal was called by the French of the 17th century, a red ochreous clay, and bits of quartz lie scattered over the surface. Beyond it are detached hills of gneiss and grey and rufous granite: the latter is so micareous that the Baloch firmly believe it to contain gold.

Inland of Mombasah the Rabai Range is a mere ridge, with a gentler counter-slope landwards, declining 150 to 200 feet, not, as such maritime formations usually are, the rampart of an inland plateau. This unusual disposition probably gave rise to the novel idea—instruments were not used—that the interior falls to, and even below, sea-level, thus forming a depression, bounded north and south by rapid rivers, the Adi and the Panga-ni. The chine is broken by deep ravines, which during the rains pour heavy torrents into the sea-arms at their base: the people might make tanks and reservoirs by draining the smaller clefts, but they prefer thirst and famine to sweating their brows. Though exposed to the blighting salt breeze, the land wants nothing but water, and, this given, no man need ‘tread upon his neighbour’s toes.’ Arecas and cocoas, bushy mangoes and small custard-apples, the guava and the castor plant, the feathery manioc, and the broad-leaved papaw and plantain flourish upon its flanks. In the patches of black forest spared by the wild woodman, the copal, they say, and the Mvule, a majestic timber-tree whose huge trunk serves for planking and doors at Zanzibar, still linger. I saw none of the cinnamon plants mentioned by Dr Krapf. A little gum-animi or copal is here dug; but the inveterate indolence of the natives, their rude equality, in which, as amongst Bushmen, no one commands, and their inordinate love for Tembo, or palm-wine, are effectual obstacles to its exploitation. When we visited these hills drought and its consequence, famine, had compelled the people to sell their children: contented with this exertion, they did no more.

We left Kisulodi-ni on January 22, 1857. Some nights afterwards fires were observed upon the neighbouring hills, and the Wanyika scouts returned with a report that the Wamasai were in rapid advance. The wise few fled at once to the Kaya, or hidden barricaded stronghold, which these people prepare for extreme danger. The foolish many said, ‘To-morrow we will drive our flocks and herds to safety.’ But ere that morning dawned upon the world, a dense mass of wild spearmen, numbering some 800 braves, sweeping like a whirlwind, with shout and yell and clashing arms, passed the Mission House, which they either did not see or which they feared to enter; dashed upon the scattered village in the vale below, and strewed the ground with the corpses of wretched fugitives. Thence driving their loot they rushed down to the shore, and met a body of 148 matchlock-men, Arabs and Baloch, Wasawahili and slaves, posted to oppose progress. The bandits fled at the first volley. The soldiers, like true Orientals, at once dispersed to secure the plundered cattle, when the Wamasai rallying, fell upon them, and drove them away in ignominious flight, after losing 25 men, to the refuge of their walls. The victors presently retired to the hill-range, amused themselves with exterminating as many Wanyika as they could catch, and, gorged with blood and beef, returned triumphant to their homes. The old Jemadar Tangai took from the unfortunate Wanyika all their remaining cows; they also retired into the interior, and the price of provisions at Mombasah was at once doubled.

The wild people of Eastern Africa are divided by their mode of life into three orders. Most primitive and savage are the fierce pastoral nomades, Wamasai and Gallas, Somal, and certain of the ‘Kafir’ sub-tribes: living upon the produce of their herds and by the chase and foray, they are the constant terror of their neighbours. Above them rank the semi-pastoral, as the Wakamba, who, though without building fixed abodes, make their women cultivate the ground: these clans indulge in occasional or periodical raids and feuds. The first step towards civilization, agriculture, has been definitively taken by the Wanyika, the Wasumbara, the Wanyamwezi, and other tribes living between the coast and the inland lakes: this third order is usually peaceful with travellers, but thievish and fond of intestine broils.

But a few years ago the Wakwafi,[^[17]] who in their raids slew women and children, were the terror of this part of the coast: now they have been almost exterminated by their Southern and S. Western neighbours, the Wamasai, a tribe of congeners, formerly friends, and speaking the same dialect. The habitat of this grim race is the grassy and temperate region from N. Westward and to S. Westward of Chaga: nomades, but without horses, they roam over the country, where their flocks and herds find the best forage; they build no huts, but dwell under skins, pitching rude camps where water and green meat are plentiful. They are described as a fine, tall, dark race resembling the Somal, with a fearful appearance caused by their nodding plumes, their hide pavoises or shields, longer than those of the ‘Kafirs,’ and their spears with heads broad as shovels, made of excellent charcoal-smelted metal. According to native travellers, they are not inhospitable, but their rough and abrupt manners terrify the Wasawahili: they will snatch a cloth from the trader’s body, and test his courage with bended bow and arrow pile touching his ribs. Life is valueless among them; arms are preferred to clothes, and they fear only the gun because it pierces their shields. They are frequented when in peaceful mood by traders from Mombasah, Wasin, Mtanga, and Panga-ni: this year, however, even those who went up from the Southern ports feared to pass the frontier. Such visits, however, are always dangerous. ‘If a number of persons are killed by a certain tribe, and there happen to be parties belong to that tribe staying amongst the race which has suffered loss, the visitors are immediately put to death,’ says Mr Wakefield. Cattle is the main end and aim of their forays, all herds being theirs by the gift of the Rain-god and by right of strength; in fact, no other nation should dare to claim possession of a cow. They do not attack by night, like other Africans: they disdain the name of robbers, and they delay near the plundered places, dancing, singing, and gorging beef to offer the enemy his revenge. Until this year they have shunned meeting Moslems and musketeers in the field: having won the day, they will, it is feared, repeat the experiment.

CHAPTER IV.
THE PEOPLE OF MOMBASAH. THE WANYIKA TRIBE.

Statio benefida carinis.—Virgil.

In 1844 Dr Krapf allowed the population of Mombasah town, without its dependencies, to be 8000 to 10,000. In 1846 M. Guillain reduced it to 2500 or 3000 souls, not including a garrison of 250 men, but including 40 families of Arabs (220 to 230 souls), and 50 Banyans and Hindostani Moslems. In 1857 I was assured that it contained 8000 to 9000 souls, thus distributed: Arabs, about 350; 300 Baloch and other mercenaries, 50 Bhattias, 25 to 30 Indian Moslems, the rest being Wasawahili and the slave races. The Wasawahili are distributed into two great groups. Older and consequently nobler, though less numerous, are the Wamwita; they derive their origin from a Shirazi Shaykh whose name is locally forgotten. The other and far larger division is the Wakilindi-ni, who trace their name from Kilindi, whence they emigrated to Shungaya alias Shiraz, and eventually to Mombasah. Originally they occupied on the western shore of the island a separate settlement, which they called after their oldest homes; they built a tower of stone, surrounded it with a wall, provided it with wells, and thus rendered themselves independent of their patrons. Some remnants of eight other tribes, coast Arabs who had suffered from the invader, also colonized Mwita. Under the rule of the Portuguese an amalgamation took place, and the several races all became Wasawahili. The city is now governed by three Shaykhs—of the Arabs, of the Wamwita, and the Wakilindi-ni: they receive a small salary, and they communicate direct with Zanzibar, visiting the Island once a year. Justice is administered by three Kazis similarly chosen: the troops are under a Jemadar, and a Banyan sent by the farmer-general from head-quarters, manages the Custom House.

The Kisawahili spoken at Mombasah is purer than that of Zanzibar, the result of being nearer the fountain-head. Here the people can hardly articulate an initial ‘A:’ they must say, for instance Bdúlá, or as often Mdúlá, not Abdullah, and they supply a terminal vowel, as Shkúlá for School; the Hindostan man who shirks our double initial consonants would change it to ishkúl. The explosive sound of the B by forcibly closing the lips is given to the M, which becomes a perfect consonant having sound and continuance: before another consonant it creates in strangers’ ears the suspicion of being preceded by the original vowel-sound, and when following a vowel it is articulated as a final not as an initial consonant—M’áná-mke (a woman), for example, would be pronounced M’ánám-ke. The initial N also becomes before a consonant hard and explosive, and it sounds to the tyro as if a rapidly pronounced ‘I’ or ‘E’ were prefixed: Europeans, for instance, write Njia, ‘Endia.’ At Mombasah I heard the Arab ‘Hamzeh,’ or compression and contraction of the larynx, when a hiatus of two similar vowels occurs, as in Mcho’o (rain) and Tá’á (a lamp): in the dialects less pure the gap would be filled up by inserting the liquid R or L, as Mfuru for Mfu’u (the name of a tree). The Arabs and the more civilized tribes, I have remarked, prefer the R to the L, and say Rufu for Lufu, the Upper Pangani river, and so forth. The T also assumes the cerebral sound of the Sanskrit and that which renders the English dentals so hard to foreigners.

We found unexpectedly at Mvíta—the ‘Mombas Mission’ having been kindly received—a reception which could not be called friendly. Small communities are rarely remarkable for amiability, and these citizens are taxed by the rest of the coast-people with overweening pride, insolence of manner, bigotry and evil speaking, turbulence and treachery. They cannot forget their ancient glories, their hereditary chiefs who ruled like kings with Wazirs, Shayhks of tribes and Amirs or chief captains commanding hosts of savage warriors. Of course they regret the Mazara whom they themselves were the first to betray—they would betray them again and regret them again to-morrow. Like all ‘civilized’ Africans, they are not only treacherous and turbulent, but also inveterate thieves and pilferers: few travellers have failed to miss some valuable in the boat that lands them. Lies were plentiful as pronouns. Whilst some for their own purposes made very light of travel in the interior, others studiously exaggerated the expense, the difficulty, and the danger; and recounted the evils which had befallen Dr Krapf because he refused to take their advice. As I determined to disregard both, so they combined to regard us as rivals and enemies. They devoted all their energies to the task of spoiling us; and failing in that matter, they tried bullying: on one occasion I was obliged to administer, sword in hand, the descent down-stairs. The Jemadar Tangai, a gaunt Mekrani some 60 years old, and measuring 6 ft 2 in., insisted courteously upon supplying an escort, with the view of exchanging his worthless swords for our guns and revolvers: he could neither read nor write, but he was renowned for ‘’Akl,’ intellect, here synonymous with rascality. His son Mustafa brought a present of goats and fruit, for which he received the normal return-gift; he expected a little cloth, gunpowder, and a gold chronometer. We were visited by a certain Shafei Shaykh; by a Mombasah merchant, Jabir bin Abdullah el Rijebi, who seemed to think that men should speak in his presence with bated breath: he almost merited and he narrowly escaped being led out of the room by his ears. The very Hindus required a lesson of civility. We were on the best of terms with the Wali or Governor, Khalfan bin Ali el Bu Saídí, a fine specimen of the Arab gentlemen: he was on board when the Sayyid died, and he told us all the particulars of that event. But the manifest animus of the public was such as to make a residence at Mombasah by no means pleasant to us.

Considering the intense curiosity of civilized humanity to know something of its fellow-men in the state so-called of nature, of the savages which now represent our remote ancestors, I proceed to sketch the typical tribe of this part of Africa. My principal authority is M. Rebmann, who during nine years has made a conscientious study of the race, and who imparted his knowledge with the greatest courtesy.

The name ‘Wanyika’ means People of the Nyika,[^[18]] or wild land: it is useless, with M. G. de Bunsen, to identify their land with the Νίχωνος ὅρμος of the Periplus, as every wilderness is here called Nyika. Moreover, the name is not anciently known upon the coast: we read of the Wakilindi-ni and of the ‘Muzungulos,’ the plundering tribe which occupied the terra firma of Mombasah, and thus we may suspect the Wanyika to be a race which has emigrated from the interior since the middle of the 17th century. Their own tradition is that they were expelled by the Gallas from the lands lying N.N. West of Melinde. They occupy the highlands between S. lat. 3° and 5°, and they are bounded north by the Wataita, and south by the Wasumbara. Dr Krapf proposes for them a census of 50,000 to 60,000 souls, which appears greatly exaggerated. They are, as usual, divided into a multitude of clans, concerning which we know little but the names. Mulattoes of an early date, negroes mixed with Semitic blood and with a score of tribes, these East African families appear to have cast off in the course of ages the variety and irregularity of hybridism; moreover, if it be true that ‘the Semite is the flower of the negro race,’ the produce would hardly be properly called half-caste. Receiving for ages distinct impressions of the physical media around them, they have settled down into several and uniform national types: these, however, will not be detected by the unpractised eye. Many considerations argue them to be a degeneracy from civilized man rather than a people advancing towards cultivation. Their language attaches them to the great South African race, and some have believed in their ancient subjection to the Ethiopian or Kushite Empire. The historian of these lands, however, has to grope through the glooms of the past, guided only by the power to avail himself of the dimmest present lights. I vehemently doubt, moreover, the antiquity of maritime races in Tropical Africa—a subject which has been discussed in my sundry studies of the Western Coast. A case in point is the latest move of the pastoral Wamasai.

Physically the Wanyika race is not inferior to other negroids, nor degraded as is the Congo negro. Like the Galla and the Somal, the skull is pyramido-oval, flattened and depressed at the moral region of the phrenologist—a persistent form amongst savages and barbarians—and straight or ‘wall-sided’ above the ears, a shape common both to ‘Semite’ and negro. The features are ‘Hamitic’ only from the eyes downwards: the brow is moderately high, broad, and conical; the orbits are tolerably distant; the face is somewhat broad and plain, with well-developed zygomata; the nose is depressed with patulated nostrils, coarse and ill-turned; the lips are bordés, fleshy and swelling, and the jaw is distinctly prognathous. The beard is scant; the hair, which though wiry, yet grows comparatively long, is shaved off the forehead from ear to ear, and hangs down in the thinnest of corkscrews, stiffened with fat. The skin is soft, but the effluvium is distinctly African; the colour is chocolate-brown and rarely black, unless the mother be a slave from the South. The figure is, like the features, Semitic above and negrotic below. The head is well seated upon broad shoulders; the chest is ample, and the stomach, except in early boyhood or in old age, does not protrude or depend. But the bunchy calf is placed near the ham; the shin-bone bends forward, and the foot is large, flat, and lark-heeled. Nothing is more remarkable than the contrast between form and face in the woman-kind: upon the lower limbs, especially the haunches, of the Medicean Venus a hideous ape-like phiz meets the disappointed eye: above hangs a flaccid bosom, below

wand-like is

Her middle falling still,

And rising whereas women rise—

Imagine nothing ill!

There is not, as amongst the Hottentots, that exaggeration of the steatopyga which assimilates the South African man to his ovines: the subcutaneous fat overlying the gluteian muscles and their adjacents, forms in early life a cushion rather ornamental than otherwise. Young men often show a curious little crupper which gives a whimsical appearance to the posterior surface—I have observed this also amongst the Somal. The favourite standing position is cross-legged, a posture unknown to Europe; sometimes the sole of one foot is applied to the ankle or to the knee of the other leg: the gait—no two nations walk exactly alike—is half-stride, half-lounge. Eyes wild and staring, abrupt gestures, harsh, loud, and barking voices, still evidence the ignoble savage.

The Wanyika afford a curious study of rudimental mind. A nation of semi-naturals as regards moral and intellectual matters, their ideas are all in confusion. To the incapacity of childhood they unite the hard-headedness of age, and with the germs of thought that make a Bacon or a Shakespeare they combine an utter incapability of developing them. Their religion is of the ‘small’ category, the large being Brahmanism and Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity and El Islam, the first active Reformation of its predecessor, and the triumph of Arianism over Athanasianism. The system is that of a ‘Gentile worshipping nothing,’ yet feeling instinctively that there is a Something above or beyond him. It is the vain terror of our childhood rudely systematized, the earliest dawn of faith, a creation of fear which ignores love. Thus they have not, in our sense of the words, God or devil,[^[19]] heaven or hell, soul or spirit.

‘Mulungu’ is the Mnyika’s synonym of the Kafir Umdali, Uhlanga, and Unkulumkulu, the Morungo of Tete, the Unghorray of Madagascar, and the Omakuru of the Damaras. Amongst the most advanced tribes it denotes a vague kind of God: here it means any good or evil ghost, especially of a Pagan. The haunting Moslem is distinguished as P’hepo, the plural of Upepo (a whirlwind, or ‘devil,’ generally called Chamchera). As amongst all Fetish worshippers, the evestrum which they call Koma—pronounced like Goma—meaning etymologically ‘one departed,’ is a subject of horror; but of the dead they say Yuzi sira—he is ended. They cannot comprehend a future state, yet they place sheep and goats, poultry and palm wine, upon the tombs of their dead. It is a modern European error (Rev. Mr J. P. Schön and Rev. Mr Sam. Crowther) to suppose that drops of liquor spilt, as by the Brass men, in honour of the old people (ancestors), food-offerings at graves, and fires lighted there on cold wet nights, evidence the European’s, the East African’s,[^[20]] or the American’s belief in futurity: as the act proves it is a belief in presentity, and after a few years the ceremony showing ‘a continuation of relationship between the living and the dead’[dead’], is always disused. Savages cannot separate the idea of an immortal soul from a mortal body: can we wonder at this when the wisest of the civilized have not yet agreed upon the subject? The characteristic of the venerative faculty amongst savages and barbarians is ever irreverence: they cannot raise themselves to the idea of a Deity, and they blaspheme as if speaking of a man and an enemy. The Wanyika horrify the Moslems by their free language concerning Allah. So King Radáma I. of Madagascar, a comparatively civilized man, who attempted to regulate his forces upon a European pattern, was in the habit of firing guns during storms; he declared that the two deities were answering one another—the God above speaking by thunder and lightning, the god below by cannon and powder. Yet he could anticipate the Bon Général Janvier by General Tazo, the swamp-fever, who he declared was his best aid against the French invader. Something of this irreverence is remarkable in the character of Richard Cœur de Lion.

The Wanyika thus hold, with our philosophers, that the Koma is a subjective, not an objective, existence; and yet ghost-craft is still the only article of their creed. All their diseases arise from possession, and no man dies what we should term a natural death. Their rites are intended either to avert evils from themselves or to cast them upon others, and the primum mobile of their sacrifices is the interest of the Mganga, or Medicine-man. When the critical moment has arrived, the ghost, being adjured to come forth from the possessed one, names some article, technically called a Kehi, or chair, in which, if worn round the neck or limbs, it will reside without annoying the wearer. This idea lies at the bottom of many superstitious practices: this negro approach to a ‘sympathetic cure’ is the object of the leopard’s claw, of the strings of white, black, and blue beads, called Mdugu ga Mulungu (ghost-beads), worn over the shoulder, and of the rags taken from the sick man’s body, and hung or fastened to what Europeans call the ‘Devil’s Tree.’ The ‘Kehi’ is preferred by the demon-ghost to the patient’s person, and thus by mutual agreement both are happy. Some, especially women, have a dozen haunters, each with its peculiar charm: one of them is called, ridiculously enough, ‘Barakat,’ in Arabic ‘a blessing,’ and the P.N. of the Æthiopian slave inherited by Mohammed.

It has not suited the Moslem’s purpose to proselytize the Wanyika, who doubtless, like their kinsmen the Wasawahili, would have adopted the Saving Faith. As it is, the Doruma tribe has been partly converted, and many of the heathen keep the Ramazan fast, feeling themselves raised in the scale of creation by doing something more than their pagan brethren. The ceremonies are the simplest contrivances of savage priestcraft. Births are not celebrated, and the weakly or deformed infant is at once strangled: it is a failure, and as such it is put away. Children become the property of the mother, or rather of her brother, to be disposed of as he pleases: the only one who has no voice in the matter is the putative father. Circumcision, an old African custom extending from Egypt to the Cape, and adopted from the negroid by the Hebrews, is a semi-religious act performed once every five or six years upon the youths en masse, and accompanied by the usual eating and drinking, drumming and dancing. A man may marry any number of wives; the genial rite, however, is no tie to these fickle souls: it is celebrated by jollifications, and it is broken as merrily.

The principal festivities, if they can be so called, are funerals: the object is to ‘break the fear’ (Ussa kiwewe) of death, an event which, savage-like, they regard with a nameless dread, an inexpressible horror. For a whole week the relations of the deceased must abstain from business, however urgent, and ruin themselves by killing cattle and broaching palm-wine for the whole community. At these times there is a laxity of morals, which recalls to mind the orgies of the classical Adonia, and refusal to lavish wealth upon the obsequies of relations is visited with tauntings and heavy fines.

A characteristic of Wanyika customs is the division of both sexes into distinct bodies, with initiatory rites resembling masonic degrees. The orders are three, not four as in India, Persia, and ancient Greece; and traces of such organization, founded as it is upon the ages of man, may be found in many communities of negroes and negroids. The Kru Republic, for instance, a pure democracy, flourishing close to the despotisms of Ashanti and Dahome, makes a triple division of its citizens: the Kedibo, or juveniles; the Sedebo, or soldiers (adults); and the Gnekbadi, elders and censors. The southern Gallas appear to be divided into ‘Toibs,’ or officers; the ‘Ghaba,’ adult warriors, who wear four Gútu or pigtails, projecting at right angles from the poll; and the ‘Ari,’ cadets or aspirants, who have a right to only two. The Wakwafi have the El Moran, warriors, young men who live with their fathers; the Ekieko, married men; and the Elkijaro or Elkimirisho, elders. The Wanyika split into the Nyere, or young; the Khambi, or middle-aged; and the Mfaya, or old. Each degree has its different initiation and ceremonies, with an ‘elaborate system of social and legal observances,’ the junior order always buying promotion from the senior. Once about every twenty years comes the great festival ‘Unyaro,’ at which the middle-aged degree is conferred. This (1857) is Unyaro-year; but the Wamasai hindered the rite. Candidates retire to the woods for a fortnight, and clay themselves for the first half with white, and during the second with red earth; a slave is sacrificed, and the slaughter is accompanied by sundry mysteries, of which my informants could learn nothing. When all the Khambi have been raised to the highest rank, the Mfaya, these, formerly the elders, return, socially, to a second childhood; they are once more Nyere, or (old) boys, and there is no future promotion for them. After the clay-coatings and the bloody sacrifice, the chief distinctions of the orders are their religious utensils. Tor instance, the Muansa (plural Miansa) drum, a goat-skin stretched upon a hollowed tree-trunk, six feet long, whose booming, drawn-out sounds, heard at night amongst the wild forested hills, resembles the most melancholy moaning, is peculiar to the third degree or elders of both sexes. It is brought during the dark hours to the Kaya, and the junior orders may not look upon it. Similarly, the women have earthenware drums, which are concealed from the men. El Idrisi (1st climate, 2nd section) had heard that the people of El Banes, 150 Arab miles by sea from Manisa or Mombasah, adored a drum called Esrahim. It was covered with skin only at one end, and was suspended by a cord to be beaten; the result was a frightful sound, heard at the distance of a league.

Languor and apathy are here at once the gifts of the media or climate, and the heritage of the race: moreover, man in these lands, wanting little, works less. Two great classes, indeed, seem everywhere to make of life one long holiday—the civilized rich, who have all things, and the savage, who possesses almost nothing. Yet is the Mnyika, and indeed mostly the wild man, greedy of gain—alieni appetens, sui pro-fusus—perfectly dishonest in quest of lucre, and not to be bound by honour or oath, as he is reckless, wasteful, and improvident. Like their neighbour-nations in this part of Africa, these people are instinctively and essentially thieves. They never go to war; agriculture, commerce, and a settled life have enervated them into pusillanimity without supplying superior knowledge for offence or even for defence. They scratch the ground with their little hoes; they wander about after their few cows and goats; they sit dozing or chatting in the sun or before a fire; and they spend hours squatting round an old pit till water collects, rather than sink it a few feet. Thus they idle away three days, and they rest from non-labour on the fourth, called Juna, from Jum’a the Moslem ‘sabbath.’ This, as amongst the Dahomans and other African tribes, is their week. Spare time is passed mostly in drunkenness, induced by Tembo or palm-wine, and with stronger liquors, when they can get them. They begin the potations early in the morning, and after midday they are seldom sober, except for want of material. The tom-tom is hardly ever silent: as amongst the Somal and the Wasawahili, it sounds at all times, seasons, and occasions: and they dance, accompanying themselves with loud cries, even to expel the bad ghost from the body of a bewitched friend. They have also the Dahoman rattle, an empty gourd or cocoa-nut, filled with pebbles and provided with a handle: this is the celebrated ‘Tamaraka’ idol worshipped by the Tupy-Guarani tribes, between the Gulf of Mexico and the Rio de la Plata. The music is simple, and they are contented to recitative for the live-long night such merum nectar as—

‘Kitosí múlálání ká-uká.’

‘The bird from the palm starts not.’

This reminds us of the Histoire d’un bouton and the magical Teutonic refrain—

‘Trink Bier, liebe, liebe Lieschen,’

arguing, says the witty author, so deep a devotion to that art which hath power to soothe the savage breast. With time and tune well developed, but wholly wanting in initiative, the wild men easily learned music from the missionaries; yet they have always preferred their own meaningless declamation. Of course the Kinyika is an illiterate language.

The policy of the Wanyika is a rude and lawless liberty, equality, fraternity. None commands where none obeys: consequently there is no ‘temperamentum of chief,’ no combination, and no possible improvement. The headman plies his hoe, like the serf, in his little plot of maize or manioc; and the clans will not unite even to protect life. Causes are decided by a council of elders, according to the great African code—ancient custom. The chief of the five Shaykhs is he of Rabai Mku; but even he dare not arrogate to himself any authority. Pilfering is common, robbing is rare; and a man caught in the act of stealing is chastised by the proprietor with sword or bow. Adultery is punished by the fine of a cow and abundance of liquor. The murderer is more often mulcted than handed over for death to the family of the slain; and little is said concerning the slaughter of a slave. Divided into half-a-dozen sub-tribes, each barely sufficient to stock an English village, these savages find petty political jealousies and intrigues as necessary and as ready to hand as do the highly civilized.

The Wanyika readily attended the European schools as long as these were a novelty; presently, with the characteristic African levity and inconsequence, they grew weary of application, and they dubbed all who so exerted themselves Wazingu, or fools. Yet in one point they are an anomaly. They possess, in a high degree, the gift of many negro and negroid races, an unstudied eloquence which the civilized speaker might envy, and which, like poetry, seems to flourish most in the dawn of civilization. To see, says a Brazilian author, men so eloquent and so badly governed does not suggest that public speaking in the virility of civilization is a great ruling power. Their unpremeditated speech rolls like a torrent; every limb takes its part in the great work of persuasion, and the peculiar rhythm of their copious dialect, favourable to such displays of oratory, forms an effective combination. Few, however, can ‘follow the words,’ that is to say, answer in due order the heads of an opponent’s speech. Such power of memory and logical faculty is not in them. The abuse of the gift of language makes them boisterous in conversation, unable to keep silence—the negro race is ever loquacious—and addicted to ‘bending their tongues like their bows for lies.’ They cannot even, to use a Zanzibar German merchant’s phrase, ‘lie honestly.’ Their character may thus be briefly summed up: a futile race of barbarians, drunken and immoral; cowardly and destructive; boisterous and loquacious; indolent, greedy, and thriftless. Their redeeming points are, a tender love of family, which displays itself by the most violent ‘kin-grief,’ and a strong attachment to an uninviting home.

A certain critic, who had probably never transgressed the bounds of Europe, but who probably had read Macaulay (‘by judicious selection and previous exaggeration, the intellect and the disposition of any human being might be described as being made up of nothing but startling contrasts’), thus complained of my description of Somal inconsistency. ‘This affectionately-atrocious people,’ he declares, ‘is painted in strangely opposite colours.’ Can we not, then, conceive the high development of destructiveness and adhesiveness, to speak phrenologically, combining in the same individual? And are not the peasantry of Connaught a familiar instance of the phenomenon? Such is the negro’s innate destructiveness, that I have rarely seen him drop or break an article without a loud burst of laughter. During fires at Zanzibar he appears like a fiend, waving brands over his head, dancing with delight, and spreading the flames, as much from instinct as with the object of plunder. On the other hand, he will lose his senses with grief for the death of near relatives: I have known several men who remained in this state for years. But why enlarge upon what is apparent to the most superficial observer’s eye?

The male dress is a tanned skin or a cotton cloth tied round the waist, strips of hairy cowhide are bound like garters, or the ‘hibás’ of the Bedawin Arabs, below the knee, and ostrich and other feathers are stuck in the tufty poll. The ornaments are earrings of brass or iron wire, and small metal chains: around the neck and shoulders, arms and ankles, hang beads, leather talisman-cases, and ‘ghost-chairs’—the latter usually some article difficult to obtain, for instance, a leopard’s claw. Those near the seaboard have ceased to extract one or more of the lower incisors—a custom whose object was probably the facilitating of expectoration—and they now rarely tattoo, saying, ‘Why should we spoil our bodies?’ They have abandoned the decoration to women, who raise the cutis with a long sharp thorn, prick it with a knife-point, and wash the wounds with red ochre and water. Abroad the Mnyika carries his bow and long skin-quiver full of reed arrows, tipped with iron or hard wood, and poisoned by means of some bulbous root: his shield is a flat strip of cowhide doubled or trebled. He has also a spear, a knife at his waist for cutting cocoa-nuts, a Rungu or knobstick in his girdle behind, and a long sword, half sheathed, and sharpened near the point. He hangs round his neck a gourd sneeze-mull, containing powdered tobacco with fragrant herbs and dried plantain-flower. On journeys he holds a long thin staff surmounted by a little cross, which serves to churn his blood and milk, a common article of diet in East Africa—similarly, the Lapps bleed their reindeer. He also slings to his back a dwarf three-legged stool, cut out of a single block of hard wood. In the ‘Reise auf dem Weissen Nil’ (p. 32), extracted from the Vicar-General Knoblecher’s Journals, we read of the chief Nighila and his followers carrying stools of tree-stumps, ornamented with glass-ware. The other approximations of custom, character, and climate between the North Equatorial basin of the White River (Nile) and the coast of Eastern Intertropical Africa are exceedingly interesting.

The costume of the Domus Aurea and Rosa Mystica is as simple: a skin or a cloth round the loins, another veiling the bosom, and in some cases a Marinda or broad lappet of woven beads, like the Coëoo of Guiana, falling in front, with a second of wider dimensions behind. A flat ruff of thick brass wire encircles the throat, making the head appear as in a barber’s dish; white and red beads, or the scarlet beans of the Abrus tree, form the earrings and necklace, bracelets and anklets, whilst a polished coil of brass wire, wound round a few inches of the leg below the knee, sets off the magnificent proportions of the limb. Young girls wear long hair, and the bold bairn takes his bow and arrows before thinking of a waist-cloth.

The Wanyika are a slave importing tribe: they prefer the darker women of the South to, and they treat them better than, their own wives. Children are sold, as in India, only if famine compels, and all have the usual hatred of slave merchants, the ‘sellers of men.’ When a certain Ali bin Nasir was Governor of Mombasah he took advantage of a scarcity to feed the starving Wanyika with grain from the public depôts. He was careful, however, to secure, as pledges of repayment, the wives and children of his debtors, and these becoming insolvent, he sold off the whole deposit. Such a transaction was little suspected by our acute countrymen, when, to honour enlightened beneficence, they welcomed with all the plaudits of Exeter Hall, ‘that enlightened Arab statesman, His Excellency Ali bin Nasir, Envoy Extraordinary of H.M. the Imam of Muscat, to the Court of H. B. Majesty;’ presented him with costly specimens of geology, and gold chronometers; entertained him at the public expense, and sent him from Aden to Zanzibar in the Hon. East India Company’s brig of war, Tigris. This Oriental votary of free trade came to a merited bad end. He was one of the prisoners taken by the doughty B’ana Mtakha of Sewi, where the late Sayyid’s ill-starved and worse-managed force was destroyed by the Bajuni spear. Recognized by the vengeful savages, he saw his sons expire in torments; he was terribly mutilated, and at last he was put to death with all the refinements of cruelty. And he deserved his fate.

The Wanyika consider service, like slavery, a dishonour: they have also some food prejudices which render them troublesome to Europeans, and those who live amongst them are obliged to engage Moslem menials. As regards the success of the ‘Mombas Mission,’ which was established in 1846, and upon which a large sum of money has been expended, the less said the better. Dr Krapf had started with the magnificent but visionary scheme of an ‘Apostle’s Street,’ a chain of mission posts stretching across Africa from sea to sea: he never, however, made converts enough to stock a single house. Those unacquainted with savage life would think it an easy task to overthrow the loose fabric of wild superstitions, and to raise upon its ruins a structure, rude, but still of higher type. Practically, the reverse is the case. The Wanyika, for instance, are so bound and chained by Adá, or custom, that inevitable public opinion, whose tyranny will not permit a man to sow his lands when he pleases; so daunted and cowed by the horrors of their faith; so thoroughly conservative in the worst sense of the word, and so enmeshed by tribal practices, of which not the least important is their triple initiation, that the slave of rule and precedent lacks power to set himself free. We may easily understand this. Religion is the mental expression of a race, and it cannot advance in purity without a correspondent intellectual improvement on the part of its votaries. On the other hand, not a few nations, especially in the dawn of civilization, have risen despite their follies of faith: but these are peoples who have within them the germs of progress. Judaism did not make the Falasha of East Africa, nor the remote colonists of Southern Arabia, an intellectual people: the Jews of Aden, to this day, show no traces of mental superiority over their neighbours. Christianity has done nothing for Abyssinia or Egypt: these lands are inhabited by peoples which have remained as nearly stationary as it is possible for human nature. Nowhere, indeed, has ‘the Church’ proved herself in the long course of ages a more complete and hopeless failure than in her own birthplace, and in her peculiar ethnic centre, Syria. Here the Marronites are in no ways superior, and in many points, such as courage and personal dignity, inferior to their neighbours, the Metawali, who have a debased religion, and the Druzes, who have none. El Islam, also, has not much to boast of on the coasts of Guinea and of Zanzibar, except that it has abolished certain abominations such as witch-killing, twin-murder, and poison ordeals, of which many have been practised in semi-civilized Europe and Asia. When, therefore, we tell the world that the Bible made England or the Koran Stambul, we merely assist in propagating a fallacy.

CHAPTER V.
FROM MOMBASAH TO THE PANGANI RIVER.

The sweeping sword of Time

Has sung its death-dirge o’er the ruined fanes.

Queen Mab.

Not a head of game, not a hippopotamus, was to be found near Mombasah. We finished our geographical inquiries; shook hands with divers acquaintances; re-shipped, after sundry little difficulties, on board the Riami; and on the 24th of January we left the turbulent island with gladdened hearts. The accidents of voyage now turned in our favour: there was a bright fresh breeze and a counter-current running southward thirty or thirty-five miles a day. After 6 hours of drowsy morning sailing, Ra’as Tewi, a picturesque headland, hove in sight, and two hours more brought the Riami to anchor at Sandy Point, in Gasi (جاسى) Bay. It lies half-way \[Arabic] between Mombasah and Wasin Island, and the position is correctly laid down in the ‘Mission Map.’[^[21]] It is a mere roadstead, without other protection against the long sweep and swell of the Indian Ocean than a few scattered ‘washes,’ and a coralline islet. The settlement lies at some distance from the shore, deep-bosomed in trees, behind a tall screen of verdant mangrove; only the nodding cocoa, sure indicator of man’s presence in East Africa, towering high over the plebeian underwood, betrays its position to the mariner. The large village of wattle and dab huts is inhabited, like Mtuapa and Takaungu, by remnants of the proud Mazrui irreconcileables, still self-exiled from Mombasah. They live under the Shaykh Abdullah bin Khamis, and a sister of Shaykh Mubarak of Mombasah, who is said to display peculiar energy. They have given refuge to fugitive slaves from Marka, and behind the coast-line they have founded a new settlement, Mwasagnombe. It is not improbable that, in common with their brethren established in other villages, they look forward to recovering Mombasah, their old appanage.

Gasi is surrounded by plantations, and the Arabs, unmolested by the Wadigo savages, to whom the fertile land belongs, live in comparative comfort. Our crew armed themselves to accompany my companion, who, despite the bad name of the people, was civilly received on shore, with sundry refreshments of cocoa-nut milk and cake of rasped pulp and rice-flour. The footprints of a small lion appeared upon the sands, but we were not young enough to undertake the fruitless toil of tracking it. This was the breeding season, as the frequent birds’-nests proved. Ensued a cool, breezy night on board the Riami, the thermometer showing 75° (F.). Our gallant captain, the melancholist, sat up till dawn, chatting with Said bin Salim, who trembled at the sound of scattered washes, and at the wind moaning over the coral bank and through the barren ‘forests of the sea.’

About sunrise we again made sail, and, guided by that excellent landmark, the Peaks of Wasin, whose height is in charts 2500 feet, we entered, after three hours, the narrow channel, with never less than 5 fathoms of water, which, running nearly due east and west, separates Wasin Island from the continent. The north of this coralline bank, an ‘insula opaca,’ about 2¼ miles long by 1 in breadth, is defended by sundry outlying ledges and diminutive cliffs, where the gulls and terns take refuge, and upon which the combing sea breaks its force. The low southern shore is rich in the gifts of floatsom and jetsom; here the tide, flowing amongst the mangrove fringes and under shady crags, forms little bays, by no means unpicturesque. To windward, or south, lies the Wasin Bank, with three or four plateaux of tree-tufted rock emerging a few feet above sea-level.

The Island, which does a little cultivation, belongs to Zanzibar, and the only settlement, about the centre of its length, is on the northern shore, fronting Wanga Bandar on the Continent. Wasin contains three Mosques, long flat-roofed rooms of coral rag and lime ranged obliquely to face Meccah, and scattered amongst little huts and large houses of ‘bordi’ or mangrove timber: the latter are tied with coir rope and plastered over with clay, which in rare cases is whitewashed. The sloping thatch-roof already approaches in size and in sharpness of pitch the disproportions of the Madagascar cottage. Huge calabashes extend their fleshy arms over the hovels, affording the favourite luxury of a cool lounge, and giving from afar a something of pleasant village aspect to the squalid settlement. Water must be brought from the mainland; the people own it to be brackish, but declare that it is not unwholesome. The climate is infamous for breeding fever and helcoma, the air being poisoned by cowries festering under a tropical sun, and by two large graveyards—here also, as at Zanzibar, the abodes of the dead are built amongst the habitations of the living. The population is a bigoted and low-minded race, Hassádin (envious fellows) of evil eye, say the Zanzibarians; a mixture of lymphatic Arabs, hideous Wasawahili, ignoble half-castes, and thievish slaves. The Sayyid maintains no garrison here; the Banyans have been forbidden to deal in cowries, and the native merchants have all the profits such as they are.

I could hear nothing of Mr Cooley’s ‘tribe named Masimba, on the coast at Wassína (Wasin Island), near Mombasa,’ a term which he translates ‘lions,’ and identifies with the Zimba invaders of Do Couto. There is, however, a district of that name between Wasin and Gasi; and it may be connected with the range crossed by M. Rebmann, in 1847, and usually written Shimba. In the interior the word Masimba is used when addressing man or woman, and the root appears to be identical with that of the Vazimba or aborigines of Ankova. The people of Wasin send caravans of 100 men to the interior, viâ Wanga Bandar. They set out about the end of February, make some 20 marches, and return with ivory and slaves after about four months.

Landing, we found the shore crowded with unarmed spectators, who did not even return our salams: we resolved in future to reserve such greetings for those who deserve them. After sitting half an hour in a mat-shed, redolent with drying cowries and dignified with the name of Furzeh, or Custom House, presided over by a young Bohrah from Cutch, we were civilly accosted by an old man, whose round head showed him to be a Hindostani. Abd el Karim led us to his house, seated us in chairs upon the terrace, and mixed for us a cooling sherbet in a kind of one-handled blue and white vase, not usually, in Europe at least, devoted to such purpose. The Riami discharging cargo, we walked into the jungle, followed by a ragged tail of men and boys, to inspect some old Portuguese wells: as we traversed the village all the women fled—a proof that El Islam here flourishes. This part of the island is thinly veiled with a red argillaceous soil which produces a thick and matted growth of thorny plants, creepers, and parasites: eastward, where the mould is deeper, there is richer vegetation, and a few stunted cocoas have taken root. After fighting through the jungle, we came upon two pits sunk in the soft rock: Said bin Salim was bitterly derided whilst he sounded the depth, 40 feet; and by way of revenge, I dropped a hint about buried gold, which has doubtless been the cause of aching arms and hearts to the churls of Wasin. There is no game on the Island or on the main: in the evening, after a warm bath amongst the mangroves, we left the dirty hole without a shade of regret.

The coast is here concealed by the usual thickset hedge of verdure, above which nod the tufts of straggling palms: its background is the rocky purple wall of Bondei—Capt. Owen’s ‘Sheemba Range of Hills, about 1500 feet high’—here and there broken by tall blue cones. After 1 h. 30 min. we sighted Wanga Bandar, where the land was smoking; this place has rarely the honour of appearing in maps. The environs belong to the Wadigo, amongst whom Said bin Salim lost a slave-girl: she had gone on leave of absence to her tribe, and though she never returned, he received from her an annual remittance of a dollar. These people, who are divided into half-a-dozen clans, occupy a fine high country which extends westward to Usumbara: they dwell in large villages, fenced to keep out the Wamasai, and they are agriculturists, fond of Jete, or public markets, at which they dispose of their grain to the coast-traders. Those whom we saw were poor-looking men: their bows were well turned and bent, with brass knobs and strings of cowgut; the notched and neatly feathered arrows had triangular iron piles. The women, who veiled the bosom, were remarkably plain, and apparently had never seen a European. These Wadigo with their southern neighbours, the Wasegeju, are porters of the inland traffic. Caravans, if they may so be called, numbering sometimes a hundred men, slaves included, set out at the beginning of the rains in March or April, from Wanga and other little ‘Bandars’ on the coast. If the capital be $1000, they distribute it into $400 of beads, and brass and iron wires (Nos. 7 and 8), with $400 of American domestics and cotton-stuff’s of sorts: the remainder serves to pay 40 porters, who each receive $10 per trip, half before starting and the rest upon return. After twenty days’ march, these trading parties arrive at Umasai and the adjacent countries; they remain there bartering for three or four months, and then march back laden with ivory and driving a few slaves purchased en route.

Our Nakhoda again showed symptoms of ‘dodging:’ he had been allowed to ship cargo from Mombasah to Wasin, and thereupon he founded a claim or rather a right to carry goods from Wasin to Tanga. Unable to disabuse his mind by mild proceedings, I threatened to cut the cable, and thus once more, the will of Japhet prevailing over that of Shem, we succeeded about 1 P.M., not without aid from an Omani craft, in hauling up our ground-tackle. The old Riami, groaning in every rib, flirted with some reefs, and floated into the open sea, whose combing waves were foaming under a stiff N. Easter. As we sped merrily along Said bin Salim busied himself in calculating the time it would take to round the several promontories. But when the water smoothened under the lee of Pemba Island he became bold enough to quote these martial lines:—

‘I have backed the steed since my eyes saw light,

And have fronted Death till he feared my sight;

And the riven helm and the piercèd mail

Were my youthtide’s dream, are my manhood’s delight.’

After two hours of brisk sailing, we lay abreast of a headland called by our crew Kwala (Chala Point of the Hydrographic Map), bounding the deep inlet and outlying islets of Jongolia-ni or Chongolia-ni. Approaching the gape of Tanga Bay, he shortened sail, or we might have made it at 4 P.M.: the entrance, however, is intricate; we had no pilot, and the crew preferred hobbling in under a bit of artemon or foresail, which they took a good hour to hoist. At sunset, having threaded the ‘Bab’ or narrow rock-bound passage which separates Ra’as Rashid, the northern mainland-spit, a precipitous bluff some 20 feet high, from the head of Tanga Islet, we glided into the smooth bay, and anchored in three fathoms, opposite and about half a mile from the town, which is known by the cocoas and calabashes crowning the ridge.

Tanga Bay is placed by Captain Owen in S. lat. 4° 35′, or five miles N. of Wasin Island, and thus the positions of the whole Coast are thrown out.[^[22]] It is in S. lat. 5°; South of Wasin, and between that place and the mouth of the Panga-ni river. This extraordinary error can have been made only by a confusion of the survey-sheets, and it appears the more singular in a work of such correctness. The inlet, called probably from its shape, Tanga, the sail, or kilt, is five miles deep by four broad, and the entrance is partially barred by a coralline bank, the site of the ancient Arab settlement. Tanga Islet, a lump of green, still contains a scatter of huts, and a small square stone Gurayza (fort), whose single gun lies dismounted: it is well wooded, but the water obtained by digging pits in the sand is scarcely potable. As a breakwater it is imperfect during the N. East trades: when a high sea rolls up ships must anchor under the mainland, and when the S. West monsoon blows home it is almost impossible to leave the harbour without accident. The bay, embanked with abundant verdure and surrounded by little settlements, receives the contents of two fresh-water streamlets: westward (311°) is the Mtofu, and N. of it (355°) the Mto Mvo-ni[^[23]] or Kiboko-ni—Hippopotamus river. The latter at several miles distant from its mouth must be crossed in a ferry; it affords sweet water, but the people of Tanga prefer scratching into their sand to the trouble of fetching the pure element. The ‘Kiboko’ is found in small numbers at the embouchures of these islands, and often within a few yards of where the boys bathed. I defer an account of our sport till we meet that unamiable pachyderm upon the Panga-ni river.

Like all the towns of the ‘Mrima’ proper, which here, I have said, begins, Tanga is a patch of thatched pent-roofed huts, built upon a bank overlooking the sea in a straggling grove of cocoa and calabash. The population is laid down at 4000 to 5000 souls, including 20 Banyans and 15 Baloch, with the customary consumptive Jemadar. The citizens are chiefly occupied with commerce, and they send twice a year in May to June and in October to November, after the Great and Little Rains, trading parties to Chaga and Umasai. At such times they find on the way an abundance of water: the land, however, supplies no food. From Tanga to Mhina-ni (the place of Mhina, Henna, or the P.N. of man, in Herr Petermann’s Map ‘Mikihani,’ and in Mr Wakefield Mihináni), on the Upper Panga-ni river, passing between Mbaramo and Pare, are 13 marches: here the road divides, one branch leading northward to Chaga, the other westward across the river to the Wamasai’s country. The total would be 15 stages, at least 20 days for men carrying[^[24]] merchandise. These caravans are seldom short of 400 to 500 men, Arabs and Wasawahili, Pagazi or free porters who carry 50 lbs. each, and slaves. The imports are chiefly cotton-stuffs, iron wires (Senyenge), brass wires (Másángo), and beads, of which some 400 varieties are current in these countries. The usual return consists chiefly of ivory, per annum about 70,000 lbs., we were told—a quantity hardly credible. I heard of some gold dust from Umasai being sent as a specimen to Sayyid Mayed: they bring also a few slaves, some small mangey camels, and half-wild asses.[^[25]] The citizens trade with the coast-savages, and manufacture, from imported iron, billhooks and hard wares for the Wasegeju. This tribe, once powerful, now uninfluential, preserves a tradition that when expelled with the Wasawahili from Shungaya by the Gallas, it migrated to the River Ozi or Dana (Zana), to the Bay of Kilifi, and finally to Wanga and Tanga. The dialect, they say, is similar to that of the Pokomo of the Dana, hence probably Mr Guillain (i. 402) declares them to have been indigens of the coast about Melinde. Still a violent, warlike, and furious brood, as described by Do Couto (Decad. xi. chap. xxi.), they hunt the Bondei Hills for slaves, and of late years, having sundry blood-feuds with their neighbours the Wadigo, they have sought the protection of King Kimwere and of the Wazegura race south of the Panga-ni river. Tanga has for some time since been spared the mortification of the Wamasai, who in this vicinity have driven and harried many a herd. I here saw two of their women, veritable human Cynocephali, flat-headed, with receding brows à la Robespierre, eyes close together, long low noses with open nostrils, projecting muzzles, and ears in strips. The land is now, comparatively speaking, thickly inhabited, and dotted with flourishing villages, Mvo-ni, Ambo-ni, Janja-ni, and others.

The only modern tribe which figures in the history of the coast is the Wasegeju. We first read of them in 1589, when the Zimba or Wazimba Kafirs, who had devastated the dependencies of Tete and Rios de Sena, on the Zambeze, swarmed northwards, massacring, and, it is said, devouring, all who opposed them between Kilwa and Mombasah. After destroying Kilwa, where they are reported to have killed and eaten 3000 Moors, men and women, they appeared upon the seaboard opposite Mombasah, whilst Thomé de Souza Coutinho was attacking the rebellious city in which the Corsair Ali Bey had taken refuge. The savages sided with the Portuguese, crossed the ford, and fell upon the townspeople with assegai and arrow. The citizens fled, preferring to face the sword and the musket of the Christian invader. After this the Zimbas marched upon Melinde, and threatened it with the fate of Kilwa and Mombasah. But the firmness of the Sultan and the courage of Mattheus Mendes de Vasconcellos were equal to the occasion: they reinforced themselves with a host of 3000 Wasegeju, and they succeeded in annihilating the cannibals. In 1592 the Wasegeju, again summoned to the assistance of Melinde, slew its enemy, the Shaykh of Kilifi. The last Shirazi Sultan of Mombasah, determining to avenge the death of his kinsmen, assembled 5000 wild men from the neighbouring hills to attack Melinde. The Wasegeju, however, not only defeated and slew him, with three of his sons, and many of the chief Moslems who accompanied him; they also captured Mombasah, and sending a young son of the defunct Sultan to Melinde, they gave up to it a city, which for a whole century had been its deadly enemy. The name ‘Mosseguaies, very barbarous,’ appears in the map of John Senex (1712). The tribe is mentioned by Dr Krapf (‘Wasegedshu’ Church Missionary Intelligencer of 1849, p. 86), and by Mr Wakefield (Wasegeju, p. 212).

We landed on the morning of Jan. 27, and were received with peculiar cordiality. In the absence of the Arab Governor, Mohammed bin Ali, we were met upon the seashore by Khalfan bin Abdillah, Hammed bin Abdillah, and the headman Kibaya Mchanga, with sundry Diwans and Wasawihili notables; by the Jemadar, with his Baloch, and by Miyan Sahib, a daft old Hindu, who here collects the customs. They conducted us up the bank to the hut formerly tenanted by M. Erhardt, seated us on chairs facing couches; brought coffee, fruit, and milk, with a goat, by way of welcome, and succeeded in winning our hearts. That day was spent in inquiries about the commerce and geography of the interior, and in listening to wild tales concerning the Æthiopic Olympus, the Sierra Nevada of Eastern Africa, which Jupiter Cooley decreed to be eternally snowless. Most of the people here pronounced the word Kilima-ngao ‘Mont bouclier,’ Ngáo being the umbo or shield-boss: from others I heard Kilima-njaro, which in Kikwafi, according to the missionaries, means ‘Mountain of Greatness.’[^[26]] Here Sheddad bin ’Ad built the City of Brass, and encrusted the hill-top with a silver dome, that shines with various and surprising colours. Here the Jánn, beings made of fire, as humans are of earth and mermen of water, hold their court, and baffle the attempts of man’s adventurous feet. The mountain recedes as the traveller advances, and the higher he ascends the loftier rises the summit. At last blood bursts from the nostrils, the fingers bend backwards (with cramp?), and the hardiest is fain to stop. Amongst this Herodotian tissue of fact and fable[^[27]] ran one golden thread of truth,—all testified to the intense cold.

Westward of the great mountain are placed in the ‘Mombas Mission Map’ the Wabilikimo (Wambelikimo), ‘literally the two measuring, i. e. twice the measure from the middle fingertip to the elbow. This is of course an exaggeration, but they are no doubt a diminutive race of men. They come to Jagga to trade, where they are called Wakoningo.’ The name, however, ‘Kimo,’ or Vazimba, the first occupants of Ankova (Madagascar), is mentioned even by Rochon: he makes them a people of pigmies, in stature averaging three feet six inches, of a lighter colour than the negro, long-armed, and with short woolly hair. South of Kafa, again, the Doko[^[28]] race is said to be only four feet in stature. Formerly we explained these traditional Blemmyes, or pigmies, by supposing them to be apes that have been submitted to savage exaggeration. But the state of the question has been completely changed since the Second Expedition of my friend Paul du Chaillu, who, despite the late Mr John Craufurd, discovered, the ‘Obongo,’ a race not only dwarfish, but living close to a tribe of unusually tall and powerful negroes: curious to say, they occupy about the same parallel of latitude as do the traditional Wabilikimo.

In the evening we were honoured with a Ngoma Khu, or full orchestra, for which a dollar was but a paltry bakhshish, were noise worth coin. The spectators appeared by no means a comely race, but they were healthier and in far better condition than the churls of Wasin. I saw, however, amongst them many cases of leprous white spots on the palms and soles. We took leave at night, provided by the Díwáns with a bullock and half-a-dozen goats, with fruit, and with milk. These headmen, who prefer to be entitled Sultan, are in the proportion of half-a-dozen per village, each one omnipotent within his own walls. In their presence the many-headed may not sit on chairs, carpets, or fine mats; use umbrellas, wear turbans, nor walk in the pattens called Kabkab: moreover, on solemn occasions such as this none but the Diwan may pace and whirl through the Pyrrhic dance. Said bin Salim described them as a kind of folk that want to eat—in fact, des escrocs: they accompanied us, however, gratis, on our various excursions, and when we went out shooting, our difficulty was to shirk an escort.

Knowing that Arab and Persian colonies had been planted at an early epoch in this part of the Sawahil, I accepted with pleasure a guide to one of the ancient cities. Setting out at 8 A.M. with a small body of spearmen, I walked four or five miles S. West of Tanga on the Mtangata road over a country dry as Arabian sand, and strewed with the bodies of huge millepedes. The hard red and yellow clays produced in plenty holcus and sesamum, manioc and papaws; mangoes and pine-apples were rare, but the Jamli, or Indian damson (in Arabic Zám and in Kisawahili Mzambaráni), the egg-plant, and the toddy-tree grew wild. The baobabs were in new leaf, the fields were burned in readiness for rain, and the peasants dawdled about, patting the clods with bits of wood. At last we traversed a Khor, or lagoon drained by the receding tide, and insulating the ruins: then, after a walk of five miles over crab-mounds, we sighted our destination. From afar it resembled an ancient castle. Entering by a gap in the enceinte, I found a parallelogram some 200 yards long, of solid coralline or lime, in places rent by the roots of sturdy trees, well bastioned and loop-holed for bows and muskets. The site is raised considerably above the mean level of the country, attesting its antiquity: it is concealed from the seaside by a screen of trees and by the winding creek, that leaves the canoes high during the ebb-tide; full water makes it an island. In the centre, also split by huge coiling creepers, and in the last stage of dilapidation, are the remains of a Mosque showing signs of a rude art. I was led with some pretension to a writing, perpendicularly scratched upon a stuccoed column: it proved to be the name of a lettered Msawahili—Kimángá wá Muamádi (Mohammed) Adi (Walad) Makame—and the character was more like Kufic than anything that I had ever seen at Harar. The ruins of houses are scattered over the enceinte, and a masonry revetted and chumam’d well, sunk 8 feet deep in the coralline, yields a sufficiency of water with an earthy taste. There are some others of similar style, but bone-dry, upon the creek-bank—they had probably been built from above, as the Arabs and Indians still do, and allowed to settle. The modern village of cajan-thatched huts, palisaded with trees, and the hovels of a few Wasegejgu savages, who use the ruins as pens for their goats, and stunted high-humped cows, attest present degradation. There were a few of the small Umasai asses, which are said to be useless for travelling. Amongst the children I remarked an Albino with flaxen hair and reddish-white skin, as if affected by leprosy. None of the tenants preserved any tradition about the place, which they call ‘Changa Ndumi.’ The Arabs, however, who accompanied me, declared that they belonged to the ‘old ancient’ Y’urabi, the dynasty preceding the present rulers of Oman; and if so, they must have been built before the middle of the last century (A.D. 1741). We returned in time to witness a funeral. The mourners were women with blackened faces, and habited in various coloured clothes, unpleasantly outlining angles and segments of circles. They ‘keened’ all day, and the drum paraded its monotonous sounds till the dawn streaked with pale light the shoulders of the far Bondei hills. I visited the little heap of cajan huts called Jánjá-ni, and lying half a mile to the north-east: here-were four civil men, Bohrahs from Hindostan, who lived by the cowrie trade.

On every fifth day the Tanga people hold at the neighbouring village of Ambo-ni a market with the savages of the interior. Having assumed an Arab dress—a turban of portentous circumference, and a long henna-stained shirt—and accompanied by Said bin Salim with his Excalibur; by the consumptive Jemadar who sat down to rest every ten minutes, and by Khalfan bin Abdillah, an old Arab who had constituted himself cicerone, we attended the ‘Golio’ on January 29. Walking along the coast, we passed through a village rich in cocoas and in iron forges, which were hard at work: a school of young hopefuls was busily employed in loud reading and in swaying the body. The country was pretty and fertile, rich in manioc and cocoas, in plantains, and the Ricinus shrub; there were a few mangoes—the people asked for the stones to plant—and many Dom or Theban palms (Crucifera Thebaica), whose bifurcations and re-bifurcations are so remarkable, and whose crimson fruit is eaten as in West Africa. Formerly the land was harried by the beef-eating Wamasai, hence the scarcity of cattle. After two miles we crossed some tidal creeks, corded over with creepers, and tree roots growing from black mire; we waded a sandy inlet, and we forded the small sweet surface drain Mtofu, which had water up to the waist. Another mile brought us to the River Mvo-ni (of Behemoth), here called the Zigi—two names in three miles, a truly African fashion! Salted by the tide, it flows under banks forty to fifty feet high, crowned with calabash and other jungle trees. Women were being ferried over: in ecstasies of terror they buried their faces between their knees till the moment of danger had passed away. These savages are by no means a maritime race, they have no boats, they rarely fish, and being unable to swim, they are stopped by the narrowest stream unless they can bridge it by felling a tree in the right direction, as it is said the beavers do.

Having crossed the river, we traversed plantations of cocoas and plantains, and ascending a steep hill, we found, after five miles of walking, the market ‘warm,’ as Easterns say, upon the seaward slope. All Tanga was there. The wild people, Wasumbara and Washenzi,[^[29]] Wadigo and Wasegeju, were clothed in greasy hides and cotton wrappers of inveterate grime. Every man carried his bow and arrow, his knobstick (Rungo), his club, his sword, and his shield, but few owned muskets. Some had come from afar, as was shown by their low wooden stools and small churning staves. The women were more numerous, and harder worked; the girls were bare-breasted, and every matron had her babe tied in a bundle to the back, its round black head nodding with every movement of the maternal person. Yet it never cries—that model baby! They carried, besides masses of beads strung round the neck, zinc and brass armlets all down the arms, and huge collars and anklets of metal, heavy loads of valuable stuff; and others sat opposite their belongings, chaffering and gesticulating upon knotty questions of fragmentary farthings. These ill-used and hard-favoured beings, with patterns burnt into their skins, paid toll for ingress at a place where cords were stretched across the path, a primitive style of raising octroi. The Bedawin exchanged their lean sheep and goats, cocoas and bananas, grain and ghee, for white and blue cottons, beads, and rude iron ware—knives, bills, and hatchets, made on the coast of metal brought from Zanzibar. The luxuries were dried fish, salt, Tembo or cocoa-toddy, spices, needles and thread, fish-hooks, and bluestone used in their rude medicine. Formerly a large quantity of ivory found its way to the ‘Golio’; now it is purchased in the interior by trading parties. The groups, gathered under the several trees, were noisy, but civil to us. Often, however, a lively scene, worthy of Donnybrook in its palmiest days, takes place, knobstick and dagger being used by the black factions as freely as fists and shillelaghs in more civilized lands. At noon we returned over the sands which were strewed with sea-slugs, and in places chœtodons lay dead in the sun. The heat of the ground made my bare-footed companions run from time to time for the shade, like the dogs in Tibet.

Sundry excursions delayed us six days at Tanga. We failed to bag any hippopotamus, the animals being here very timid. A herd of six, commanded by a large black old male, gave us a few long shots; at first the beasts raised the whole head and part of the neck; afterwards nothing but the eyes were exposed. The people declare that they always charge a man who has left a pregnant wife at home. Our only result was the dropping of my big Beattie (2 barrelled, 24 lbs.) into the water. I had fired it when sitting in a mangrove tree, and ‘purchase’ being wanted, I narrowly escaped following it. The river, however, was only 2 fathoms deep, and we presently recovered it by diving: the Arabs usually claim half the value of things thus reclaimed.

Our visit ended with a distribution of embroidered caps and Jamdani muslins, and we received farewell visits till dark. At 5 A.M. on Feb. 2nd, after a sultry night varied by bursts of rain, which sounded like buckets sluicing the poop, we drifted out to sea under the influence of the Barri or land-breeze. Five hours of lazy sailing ran us to an open road between Tanga and Panga-ni, called Mtangata, which, according to the guides, was derived from the people living on toasted grains during war or famine. It is evidently the Portuguese ‘Montagane,’ whose Shaykh, with 200 men, assisted in 1528 Nuno da Cunha against the Sultan of Mombasah. Exposed to the N. East wind, and imperfectly defended by two low and green-capped islets, Yambe (North) and Karangú (East), it is rendered by the surf and rollers of the Indian Ocean a place of trembling to the coast sailors. The country appears fertile, and a line of little villages, Kisizi, Marongo, Tamba-ni, and others, skirt the shore. Here we spent the day, in order to inspect some ruins, where we had been promised Persian inscriptions and other curios.

After casting anchor, I entered a canoe and was paddled across a bay once solid ground, in whose encroaching waters, according to local tradition, a flourishing city, extending over the whole creek side, had been submerged. The submarine tombs were like those of the Dead Sea: apparent to the Wasawahili’s eyes, they eluded mine. The existing settlements are all modern, and none of them appear upon Capt. Owen’s charts. After an hour’s work we pushed up a narrow creek, grounding at every ten yards, and presently we reached an inlet, all mangrove above and mud below. Landing at a village called Tongo-ni, where the people stood to receive us, we followed the shore for a few paces, turned abruptly to the left, over broken ground, and sighted the ruins.

Moonlight would have tempered the view: it was a grisly spectacle in the gay and glowing shine of the sun. A city was once here; and the remnants of its mosques showed solid and handsome building, columns of neatly cut coralline blocks and elaborate Mihrabs, or prayer-niches. Fragments of homesteads in times gone by everywhere cumbered the ground, and the shattered walls, choked with the luxuriant growth of decay, sheltered in their shade the bat and the night-jar. I was shown in an extensive cemetery the grave of a Wali or Santon, whose very name had perished. His last resting-place, however, was covered with a cajan roof, floored with tamped earth, cleanly swept and garnished with a red and white flag. Other tombs bore cacophonous Wasawahili appellations embalmed in mortally bad Arabic epitaphs: these denoted an antiquity of about 200 years. Beyond the legend above noticed, none could give me information concerning the people that have passed away: the architecture, however, denoted a race far superior to the present owners of the land.

Each of the principal mausolea had its tall stele of cut coralline, denoting, like the Egyptian and Syrian Shahadah, the position of the corpse’s head. In one of these, the gem of the place, was fixed a chipped fragment of Persian glazed tile, with large azure letters in the beautiful character called ‘Ruka’a,’ enamelled on a dirty-yellow ground. The legend,شيد روشن (Shid i raushan, the ‘bright sun’), may be part of a panegyrical or devotional verse removed from the frieze of some tomb or mosque. The country people hold it an impregnable proof that the men of Ajem once ruled in Tongo-ni:[^[30]] but the tile, like two China platters, also mortared into the Shahadah, is evidently an importation from the far north. It was regarded with superstitious reverence by the Wasawahili, who informed me that some years before Kimwere, Sultan of Usumbara, had sent a party of bold men to bear it away: of these, nineteen died mysterious deaths, and the relic was thereupon returned to its place. A few muslins, here representing dollars, had a wonderful effect upon their fancies: I was at once allowed by the principal Diwan to remove it; although no one would bear a hand to aid the Beni Nár, or Sons of Fire, as the Arabs honourably style our countrymen. The tile, a common encaustic affair, found its way to the Royal Geographical Society; nor did the East African expedition feel itself the worse for having sent it. We did not visit the Támbá-ni settlement, where, according to the people, there is a coralline mosque, and tombs are to be seen under the seawater.

Our purchase concluded, we returned to the Riámi, followed by the headmen, who after refreshment of dates, Maskat Halwa (sweetmeats), and coffee, naturally became discontented with the promised amount of ‘hishmat,’ or honorarium. At last they begged us to return, and to assist them in digging for sweet water. There were four or five carefully-built wells in the ruined city; but all had been exhausted by age, and the water supplied by the lowland-pits was exceedingly nauseous. As a rule, these people readily apply for advice and assistance to the ‘Wazungu,’ or wise-men, as Europeans are styled; and if showers chance to accompany the traveller, he is looked upon as a beneficent being, not without a suspicion of white magic. Here, with $6, we took leave of pleasant old Khalfan, our guide, a veteran, but still hale and vigorous: no Omani Arab is, I may again remark, worth his salt till his beard is powdered by Time.

At 5 A.M. on February 3rd, having shipped a pilot, we hoisted sail; after three hours we ran past Maziwi Island and slipped down before the light and tepid morning breeze to the port of Panga-ni. It was necessary to land with some ceremony at a place which I determined to make our starting-point into the interior. Presently after arrival I sent Said bin Salim, in all his bravery, to deliver the Sayyid of Zanzibar’s circular letters addressed to the Wáli, or Governor, to the Jemadar, to the Collector of Customs, and to the several Diwáns. All this preparation for a trifle of 80 miles! But we are in Africa; and even in Europe such a raid, through an enemy’s country is not always easy.

My companion and I landed in the cool of the evening with our Portuguese servants and our luggage. We were received with all honours of noise and crowding. The orchestra consisted of three monstrous drums (Ngoma Khu), caissons of cocoa-trunk, covered at both ends with goat-leather, and pounded, like the pulpit, with fist; and of Siwa or bassoons of hard blackwood, at least five feet long. These were enlivened by a pair of Zumari, or flageolets, whose vile squeaking set the teeth on edge; by the Zeze, or guitar; the Kinanda, or banjo; by the Barghumi or Kudu horn; and by that instrument of dignity, the Upatu, a brass pan, the primitive cymbal, whose bottom is performed upon by little sticks like cabbage-stalks. The Jemadar, Asad Ullah, came en grand’ tenue. The Diwans capered and pyrrhic’d before us with the pomp and circumstance of drawn swords, whilst the prettiest of the slave girls, bare-headed and with hair à la Brutus, sang and flapped their skirts over the ground, performing a pavane with a very modest and downcast demeanour, as if treading upon a too hot floor. They reminded me of a deceased friend’s clever doggrel—

You look so demure, ma’am, so quiet, so calm,

Ever chanting a hymn, ever singing a psalm;

Yet your thoughts are on heaven and virtue no more

Than the Man’s in the Moon’—

And as the dance waxed warm certain movements of the loins appeared, as might be expected. A crowd of half-breeds and sooty sons of Africa stood around to enjoy the ‘pi-pi’ of the flutes, the ‘bom-bom’ of the huge drums, the mjimbo (singing) of the men, and the vijelejeh (lullalooing) of the women. After half-an-hour’s endurance of this purgatory we were led to our sleeping place, the upper rooms, or rather room, of the Wali or Governor’s house—its owner was one Meriko, a burly black freedman of the late Sayyid Said—and there the evening was spent by us over considerations of ways and means.

CHAPTER VI.
FROM PANGA-NI TOWN TO TONGWE OUTPOST. THE
BALOCH GUARD.

Ma tutta insieme poi tra verdi sponde

In profondo canal l’acqua s’aduna,

E sotto l’ombra di perpetua fronde

Mormorando sen va gelida e bruna;

Ma transparente si, che non asconde

Del imo letto sua vaghezza alcuna. Tasso.

In the heroic ages of Bruce and Mungo Park, Denham and Clapperton, Hornemann and Caillié, African travel had a prestige which, after living through a generation, came, as is the fate of all things sublunary, to a natural end. The public glutted with adventure and invention, which the ‘damnable license of printing’ ushered into the world, soon suffered from the humours of a severe surfeit: it learned to nauseate the monotonous tale of rapine, treachery, and murder; of ugly and unsavoury savagery—the mala gens, as was said anent certain South countrymen, of a bona terra—of bleared misery by day and animated impurity by night, and of hunting adventures and hair-breadth escapes, which often made the reader regret the inevitable absence of a catastrophe. It felt the dearth of tradition and monuments of the olden time, the lack of romance, variety, and history, whilst the presence of a ‘future,’ almost too remote for human interest, was rather an aggravation than a palliation of the evil. A temporary revival of interest was, it is true, recited by the Egyptian hippopotamus and Gordon Cumming’s trophies: Livingstone’s first journey and Paul du Chaillu’s gorilla also caused a transient burst of enthusiasm. But this soon had its day, and the night that followed was darker than before. In fact it still glooms.

Yet African travel still continues to fulfil all the conditions of attractiveness as laid down by that great city authority, Leigh Hunt. The theme has remoteness and obscurity of place, difference of custom, marvellousness of hearsay; events passing strange yet credible; sometimes barbaric splendour, generally luxuriance of nature, savage life, personal danger and suffering always borne (in books) with patience, dignity, and even enthusiasm. Moreover, no hours are more fraught with smiling recollections to the author: nothing can he more charming than the contrast between his vantage ground of present ease, as he takes up his pen at home, and that past perspection of want, hardships, and accidents upon which he gazes through the softening, beautifying atmosphere of time. And the animus of the writer must to some extent inspire his readers.

We arose early in the morning after making Panga-ni, and repaired to the terrace for the better enjoyment of the view. The river-vista, with cocoa avenues to the north, with yellow cliffs on the southern side, some 40 feet high, abrupt as those of the Indus, and green clad above; with a distance of plum-blue hill, upon which eye and mind both love to rest; the mobile swelling water bounded by strips of emerald verdure and golden sand, and the still and azure sea dotted with ‘diabolitos,’ little black rocks, not improperly called ‘devilings,’ wanted nothing but the finish and polish of art to bring out the infinite variety, the rude magnificence of nature. A few grey ruins upon the hills would enable it to compare with the most admired prospects of the Rhine, without looking as if it had been made picturesque by contrast, to attract tourists, and with half-a-dozen white Kiosks and Serais, minarets and latticed summer villas, it would almost rival that gem of creation, the Bosphorus.

Panga-ni[^[31]] ‘in the hole,’ or ‘between the highlands,’ as was said of the River Lee, and its smaller neighbour, Kumba, hug the left or northern bank of its river: the site is a flat Maremma bounded by the sea and by a hill range, ten or eleven miles distant. Opposite are Mbweni and Mzimo Mpia, small villages built under tall bluffs of yellow sandstone, precipitous and impenetrably covered with wild growth. The stream which separates these rival pairs of settlements may be 200 yards broad: the mouth has an ugly line of bar-breakers, awash at low tide; the only fairway course is a narrow channel to the south, and the entrance is intricate, with reef and shoal. This in Capt. Owen’s time was some 12 feet deep: now it it is reduced to seven or eight: although a report had been spread that the ‘Shah Allum’ had crossed it, nothing but country craft can safely enter, as some of our enterprising compatriots have discovered, to their cost. Panga-ni Bay is shown to the mariner by its ‘verdurous wall’ of palms and by its dotting of small dark rocks; by Maziwi Island, a green-capped gem in a bezel of golden sand, bearing S. East, and southwards by the yellow cliffs of Mbweni. Vessels lie snugly in the outer roads, but when making the inner harbour even Hamid, most niggardly of Suris, expended a dollar upon a pilot. At low water in the dry season the bed of this tidal stream is partly exposed, and its produce during the flow is briny as the main: the rains cause it to swell with the hill-freshets, and then it becomes almost potable. The wells produce heavy and brackish drink, but who, ask the people, will take the trouble to fetch sweeter? The climate is said to be tolerably healthy; throughout the long and severe rainy monsoon, however, the place is rich in dysenteries and in fatal bilious remittents.

Panga-ni boasts some 19 or 20 stone houses of the usual box style: the rest is a mass of cajan huts, each with its large and mat-encircled patio or courtyard, whose outer lines form the streets, and wherein almost all the business of life is transacted. The settlement is surrounded by a thick thorny jungle, harbouring not a few leopards. One of these felines lately scaled the high terrace of our house, and seized a slave-girl: her master, the burly Wáli, who was sleeping by her side, snatched up his sword, hurried into the house and bolted the door, heedless of the miserable cry, ‘B’ana, help me!’ The wretch was carried into the jungle, and incontinently devoured. As full of crocodiles is the river: whilst we were at Panga-ni a boy disappeared. When asked by strangers why they do not kill their crocodiles and burn their bush, the people reply that the former bring good luck, and that the latter is a fort to which they can fly when need drives them. Plantains, arecas, and cocoas grow all about the town; around it are plantations of papaws, betel, and Jamlis, whilst further lie extensive Shambas, or plantations, of holcus, maize, sesamum, and other grains. The clove flourishes, and, as elsewhere upon the Zanzibar coast, a little cotton is raised for household purposes; it will be long, however, before East-African cotton can influence the English market, and as yet it has proved only a snare and a delusion. A notable and narrow-minded party-cry of these modern days, as applied to Africa, are the three Cs—Cotton, Civilization, and Christianity: they ‘pay,’ however, better than to beg in the name of roads and schools, steamers and steam engines—the true means which will eventually lead to the wished-for end.

Animals are here rare. Cows soon die after eating the grass, and even the Banyans despair of keeping them alive. Sheep are scarcely to be found, and goats, being almost wild, give very little milk, and that only before yeaning. But fish is abundant; poultry thrives, as it does all over Africa, though not so much on the coast as in the interior; and, before the late feuds began, clarified butter, that ‘one source’ of the outer East, was cheap and plentiful. Made in the interior by the Wazegura, and other Washenzi, with rich milk, stored in clean vessels, and sold when fresh, it reminded me of the J’aferabádi ‘Ghi,’ so celebrated throughout Western India.

Panga-ni, with its three neighbours, may contain a total of 4000 inhabitants, Arabs and Wasawahili, slaves and heathenry: of these a large proportion are feminines and concubines. Twenty Banyans manage the lucrative ivory trade of the Chaga, Nguru, and Umasai countries, which produce the whitest, largest, heaviest, softest, and, perhaps, finest ivory known. The annual export is said to be 35,000 lbs., besides 1750 lbs. of black rhinoceros horn, and 160 lbs. of hippopotamus’ teeth; the latter is an article which, since porcelain teeth were invented, has lost in value.[^[32]] The other exports are holcus, maize, ghi, and Zanzibar rafters, cut near the river mouth, and up stream.

Trading parties travel to the Umasai, Chaga, and Nguru countries at all seasons, even when the rainy monsoon makes the higher Panga-ni difficult to cross. As many as 1000 Wasawahili and slavers, directed by a few Arabs, set out, laden with iron and brass wires (Nos. 7 and 8), some 50 of the former to 3 of the latter; with small brass chains which, fastened together, are used as kilts (Mkifu)[(Mkifu)] by the Wamasai; with American domestics, indigo-dyed calicoes (Kiniki), and checks, with beads of sorts, especially the white and the blue. Each man carries a pack worth from $15 to $25: consequently the total venture is of £4000. The caravan reaches its ground in about 20 days, and returns after a period varying between two and six months. The purchase of slaves is not on a large scale; nor is the coast journey distinguished by inhumanity. Here the free traveller dies as frequently as the servile. The merchants complain loudly of the ‘Pagazi,’ or porters: these fellows are prepaid $10 for the trip, and the proprietor congratulates himself if, after payment, only 15 per cent. abscond. The Hindu’s profit must here be enormous, I saw one man to whom $26,000 were owed by the people. What part do interest and compound interest play in making up such a sum, when even Europeans will demand 40 per cent. for moneys lent on safe mortgage or bottomry? We heard of another case, in which a bond worth $60, and sold for $30, became, by post-obits and other processes, $10,000: the affair was referred to the Zanzibar Government, which allowed $1000 by way of indemnification. Some of their gains are swallowed up by the rapacity of these savages, whose very princes are inveterate beggars. The pliant Banyan always avoids refusals, like the diplomatic Spaniard, ‘saying no, although he may do no’; consequently he will find at his door every evening some 70 or 80 suitors, who besiege him with cries for grain, butter, or a little oil.

After the dancing ceremony arose a variety of difficulties, resulting from the African traveller’s twin banes—the dollar and the blood-feud. Panga-ni, Mbweni, and the other settlements on this coast, nominally belong, by right of conquest and succession, to the Sayyid of Zanzibar, who invests and confirms the Governors and Diwans. At Panga-ni, however, these officials are par congé d’élire, selected by Kimwere, Sultan of Usumbara, whose ancestors received tribute from the Mountains of Paré eastward to the Indian Ocean, and who still claims the northern villages. On the other hand, Mbweni and the southern settlements are in the territory of the Wazegura, a violent and turbulent tribe, inveterate slave-dealers, and cunning at kidnapping, whilst the Christian merchants of Zanzibar have been thoughtlessly allowed by the Prince Regnant to supply them freely with muskets and ammunition. Of course the two tribes, Wasumbara and Wazegura, are inveterate, deadly foes: moreover, about a year ago, a violent intestine feud broke out amongst the latter, who at the time of our visit were burning and plundering, selling and murdering one another in all directions. About two months had passed since they had cut the throat of one Moyya, a slave belonging to the Sayyid of Zanzibar; and, as usual, the murder was left unpunished. The citizens of Panga-ni, therefore, hearing that we were bearers of a letter from the Sayyid of Zanzibar to Sultan Kimwere, marked out for us the circuitous route viâ Mtangata, where no plundering Wazegura from the south of the Panga-ni river could try their valour. We, on the other hand, wishing to inspect that same stream, determined upon proceeding by the directest line, along its left or northern bank. The timid townsmen had also circulated a report that we were bound for Chaga and Kilima-njaro; the Wamasai were ‘out,’ the rains were setting in, and they saw us without armed escort. They resolved, therefore, not to accompany us; but nevertheless did each man expect his gift of dollars and his bribe of inducement.

The expense of the journey was an even more serious consideration. In these lands the dollar is almighty. If it be lacking, you must travel alone, unaccompanied, at least, by any but blacks; without other instrument but a pocket-compass, and with few weapons. You must conform to every nauseous custom; you will be subjected at the most interesting points to perpetual stoppages; the contents of your note-book will be well-nigh worthless; and unless you be one in a million, you may make up your mind that want and hardship will conduct you to illness and perhaps to death. This is one extreme, and from it to the other there is no ‘golden mean.’ With abundance of money—say £5000 per annum—an exploring party in these parts could trace its own line, paying off all opposers. It could study, if it pleases, even infusoria; handle sextants in the presence of negroes, who would willingly cut every throat for one inch of brass; and, by travelling comfortably, it would secure the best chance of return. Either from Mombasah or from Panga-ni we might have marched through the plundering Wamasai to Chaga and Kilima-njaro; but an escort of at least 100 matchlocks would have been necessary. Pay, porterage, and provisions for such a party would have amounted to at least £100 per week; and a month and a half would have absorbed the whole of our scanty supplies. Thus it was, gentle reader, that we were compelled to rest contented with a walking trip to Fuga.

Presently the plot thickened. Muigni Khatib, eldest son and heir of Sultan Kimwere, a black of unprepossessing physiognomy, with a ‘villainous trick of the eye and a foolish hanging of the nether lip;’ a prognathous jaw garnished with cat-like mustachios and cobweb beard; with a sour frown and abundant surliness by way of dignity, dressed like an Arab, and raised above his fellows by El Islam, sent a presumptuous message requesting us to place in his hands what we intended for his father. This chief was then journeying to Zanzibar with fear and trembling: he had tried to establish at his village, Kirore, a Romulian asylum for fugitive slaves, and having partially succeeded in enticing away many ruffians, he dreaded the consequences. The Baloch Jemadar strongly urged us privily to cause his detention in the Island, a precaution somewhat too Oriental for our taste; he refused, however, the Muigni’s request in his own tone. Following princely example, the dancing Diwans claimed a fee for permitting us to reside. As they worded it El Ada—the habit—basing it upon an ancient present from Lieut.-Colonel Hamerton, and as they were in palpable, manifest process of establishing a local custom, which in Africa becomes law to the latest posterity, we flatly objected, showed our letters, and in the angriest of moods, threatened reference to Head Quarters. Briefly, all began to angle for bakhshish, but I cannot remember any one catching it: they revenged themselves by promising to show us a minaret, and by showing only an old tomb—poor reward for 16 miles in the burning sun.

Weary of negro importunities, we resolved to visit Chogwe, the nearest Baloch outpost upon the Rufu[^[33]] (Lufu), or Upper Pangani river, and thence, aided by the Jemadar, who had preceded us, to push for Fuga, the capital village of Usumbara. We made our preparations silently, paid off the Riámi, rejected the Diwans who wished to accompany us as spies, left Said bin Salim and Caetano, the Goanese lad, in the house of the Wali Meriko, who presently accompanied his Muigni to Zanzibar; and under pretext of a short shooting excursion, we hired a long canoe and four men, loaded it with the luggage required for a fortnight, and started with the tide, at 11 A.M. on January 6, 1858.

FUGA, CAPITAL OF USUMBARA.

First we grounded, then a puff of wind drove us on at railway speed, and then we scraped again: it was impossible to avoid being taken aback, so abrupt are the windings of the bed. At last we were successful in turning the first dangerous angle: here, where sea-breeze and tide meet the buffing stream, forming a ‘Lahr,’ as the Baloch call it, navigation becomes perilous to small craft. There is, as usual at and near the mouths of African rivers where the water acts as wind conductor, a little gale blowing upstream, a valuable aid to craft bound inland, but not without its risks; here many a boat has filled and sunk beneath the ridge of short chopping waves. After five miles, during which the turbulent river, streaked with lines of froth, gradually narrowed, we found it barely brackish, and somewhat farther it was sweet as the celebrated creek-water of Guiana.

Often since that day, while writing amid the soughing blasts, the dashing rain, and the darkened air of a wet season in West Africa and the Brazil, have I remembered with yearning the bright and beautiful spectacle of those Zangian streams, whose charm, like the repose of the dead, seems heightened by proximity to decay. We had soon exchanged the amene and graceful, though somewhat tame scenery of the sandstone formation on the seaboard, for a view most novel and characteristic. Behemoth now reared his head from the foaming waters, gazed upon us, snorted at us, and sank back surlily and suspiciously into the depths of his home. Crocodiles, terrified by the splash of paddles, waddled down, as dowagers might, with their horrid claws dinting the slimy bank, and lay upon the water like yellow-brown tree-trunks, measuring us with small malignant green eyes, deep set under warty brows. Monkeys rustled the tall trees, here peeping with curiosity almost human, there darting away in fear amidst the wondrous frondage and foliage; now gambolling and frolicking up and down the corkscrew-like bush-ropes, nature’s cables, shrouds, and stays; then disappearing amidst the gloom of virgin forest. Below, their younger brethren, the jungle men and women—

‘So withered and so wild in their attire,

That look not like th’ inhabitants o’ th’ earth,

And yet are on’t’—

planted their shoulder-cloths, their rude crates, and their coarse weirs upon the muddy inlets where fish abounded. The sky was sparkling blue, the water was bluer, and over both spread the thinnest blue haze, tempering raw tones of colour to absolute beauty. On both sides of the shrinking stream a dense curtain of many-tinted vegetation,

‘Yellow and black, and pale and hectic red,’

shadowed swirling pools, where the current swept over the growth of intertwisted fibres. The stunted Mkindu, brab or wild date (Phœnix sylvestris), much used for mats, contrasted with the Nakhl el Shaytan, or Devil’s Date (Raphia Vinifera), which, eccentric in form and frondage, curved arms sometimes 30 and even 35 feet long, over the dancing wave: this dwarf-giant of the palms has no trunk to speak of, but each midrib is thick as a man’s thigh, and the vegetable kingdom cannot show such length of foliage. Not a few of the trees were so distinguished by oppositions of tall and sturdy trunk supporting frail and tender belongings, that they seemed to bear leaves and blossoms not their own. Upon the watery margin large lilies of snowy robe, some sealed by day, others wide expanded and basking in light and air, gleamed beautifully against the black-green growth and the clear bitumen-brown of the bank-water. In scattered spots were inhuman traces of human presence; tall arecas and cocoas waving over a now impenetrable jungle; whilst plantains, sugar-canes, limes, and bitter oranges, choked with wild verdure, still lingered about the broken homestead and around the falling walls, blackened by the murderer’s fire. And above all reigned the peculiar African and tropical stillness of noontide, deep and imposing, broken only by the curlew’s scream or by the tepid breeze rustling the tree-tops in fitful gusts, whispering among the matted foliage, and swooning away upon the warm bosom of the wave.

Amid such scenes we paddled and poled till the setting sun spread its cloak of purple over a low white cliff, upon whose feet the ripple broke and on whose head lingered venerable trees that stood out from the underwood of the lower banks. Here lies the Pir of Wasin, a saint described by our Baloch guide as a ‘very angry, holy man’ (bará jabrá Pir). A Sherif of pure strain, he gallantly headed, in times long gone by, his Moslem followers flying from Panga-ni, when it was attacked by a ravenous herd of heathenry. The infidels seem to have had the advantage in running: they collared the Faithful at these cliffs, and would have made mince-meat of them, when Mother Hertha, at the prayer of the Pir, opened wide and received them in her bowels. This Shaykh will not allow the trees to be felled or the floods to rise above the level of his grave: moreover, if the devotee, after cooking food at the tomb in honour of its tenant, venture to lick his fingers—the usual succedaneum for napkins in East Africa, and throughout the Moslem world—he is at once delivered over to the haunting Jinns. The Baloch never pass the place without casting a handful of leaves, a bullet, or a few grains of powder by way of humble heave-offering into the stream. Our guide told us, in accents of awe, how a Suri Arab, doubtless tainted with Wahhabi heresy, had expressed an opinion that this Pir had been a mere mortal, but little better, if at all better, than his own sinful self; how the shallow scoffer’s ship was wrecked within the year, and how he passed through water into the fire of Jehannum. Probatum est—defend us, Allah! from the sins of Reason.

We passed three small Arab timber-craft which were laying in a cargo of red and white mangrove trunks, and in many places floated small rafts of palm-fronds ready to be guided down-stream. At sunset the tide, running like a mill-race, compelled our crew to pole up a little inlet near Pombui or Kipombui, a village on the left bank, well stockaded with split areca trunks. The people who are subject to Zanzibar, and are claimed by Kimwere, flocked out to welcome their strangers, laid down a bridge of cocoa-ribs, brought chairs, and offered a dish of small green mangoes, here a great luxury. We sat under a tree till midnight, unsatiated with the charm of the darker hours. The moon rained molten silver over the black foliage and the huge fronds of the Devil’s Dates (Raphias); the stars gleamed like golden lamps hung unusually high in the limpid air, and Venus, the beautiful, glittered diamond-like upon the pure front of the firmament. The fireflies rose in a scatter of sparks—‘a shower of fire’ Southey has it—now all shone out simultaneously through the dark; then the glow melted away, as if by concerted impulse, amidst the glooms of the ground. At our feet rolled the black waters of the creek; in the jungle wild beasts roared fitfully; Leviathan and Behemoth crashed through the bush, and the night breeze mingled softly sighing sounds with the murmurs and the gurgling of the stream.

About midnight, when the tide flowed strong, we resumed our way. The river then became a sable streak down the avenue of lofty trees except where a bend suddenly opened its mirrory surface to the reflection of the moon, and stretched it before us like a silver ribbon. The deep roar of the hippopotamus, the snorting, and the occasional blowing sounded close to our stern, and the crew begged me to fire for the purpose of frightening a certain pernicious ‘rogue’ whose villanies had gained for him the royal title of ‘Sultan Mamba,’ or King Crocodile: now we heard the splashing of the huge beasts, as they scrambled over the shoals; then they struggled with hoarse grunts up the miry slippery banks which led to fields and plantations; then, again, all was quiet as the grave. After a protracted silence, deep and drear, the near voice of a man startled us as though it had been some ghostly sound. At 2 P.M., reaching a cleared tract on the river-side, the ‘ghaut’ or landing-place of Chogwe, we made fast the canoe, looked to our weapons, and covering our faces against the clammy dew and the blinding, paralyzing moonlight, we lay down to snatch an hour’s sleep. The total distance rowed was about 13½ miles.

We began the next morning with an inspection of Chogwe, the bazar, to which we were escorted with sundry honorary discharges of matchlocks, by the Jemadar, and 20 Bashi Buzuks. It was first occupied some few years ago, when the Church Missionary Intelligencer had published (Jan. 1850) a ‘fact,’ namely, that the ‘Imam of Zanzibar had not one inch of ground between the Island of Wasin and the Panga-ni river.’ The fact proved to be a fiction, and the late Sayyid at once garrisoned Chogwe and Tongwe with 25 Baloch. About this time, also, King Kimwere, with cheap generosity, had offered to Dr Krapf by way of mission-station a choice of Tongwe, of Pambire, or of Meringa, a lofty peak in the continuous range to the N. West. A certain French admiral declared that he would occupy these places where the ‘Imam’ had little authority; ‘if they do, I’ll burn the country faster than they can travel,’ was the Arab’s reply. M. Guillain next strove hard to prove that none of the Bu Saidi ever included even Makdishu in their dominions.

Chogwe is situated upon an eminence gently rising from the grassy plain of black alluvial soil which is flooded during the rains. It is seven direct miles distant from Panga-ni town, bearing west 288°; the walk over a rugged path occupies four or five hours, yet few men but slaves availed themselves of the short cut. The position is badly chosen, water is distant, the rugged soil produces nothing but stunted manioc, and when the inundation subsides in the lowlands it is exposed to miasma, whilst the frequent creeks must he crossed upon tree trunks acting bridges. The garrison at such times suffers severely from sickness, especially from fever and diarrhœa, and the men, dull as a whaler’s crew lorn of luck, abhor the wretched desolate out-station. Commanding, however, the main road to Usumbara, Chogwe affords opportunity for an occasional something in the looting line—which is a consideration.

HILL-FORT AT TONGWE.

A stiff snake-fence surrounds the hill-crest and defends the cajan penthouses of the Bashi Buzuks: the only works are two platforms for matchlock-men planted on high poles like the Maychan of Hindostan and the Mintar of Syria. The Washenzi savages sometimes creep up at night, shoot a few arrows into the huts, set fire to the matting with the spicula ignita, and after other such amenities, hurriedly levant. The Wazegura, though fighting with one another, did not when we visited the place molest the Baloch. To the North and West of Chogwe rises a continuous range, the outliers of Usumbara: about 15 miles S. Westward (233° 15′) in the plains of the Wazegura beyond the river is a succession of detached hills of which the most remarkable, Tongwe Mwanapiro, in our charts called Genda-genda, may be seen from Zanzibar. Here rules one Mwere, a chief hostile to the mercenaries, who boast that if they numbered 50 they could overrun and plunder the whole land: the Asiatics, not caring to soil their hands with negro blood, make their slaves fight his men even as the ingenuous youth, of Eton offered their scouts to meet in the cricket-field the ambitious youth of Rugby. It is certain that a few stout fellows, with a competent leader and a little money for good arms and ammunition, might easily establish an absolute monarchy over the independent blacks, and filibuster for Zanzibar, as the Khedive is now doing for Egypt.

These Baloch mercenaries merit some notice. They were first entitled Askar in the days of Sultan bin Ahmad, father of the late Sayyid Said, who preferred them to his unruly self-willed Omani Arabs and his futile half-castes and blacks: he acted upon the same principle which made the Ayyubite sultans of Syria and Egypt arm first Kurdish and afterwards Circassian ‘Mamluks.’ From 1000 to 1500 men were scattered over the country in charge of the forts: the ruler knew that they were hated by all Arabs, and to create dissensions even amongst his own children was ever the astute Sayyid’s policy. The Wáli and the Jemadar, like the Turkish Wáli and Mushir, are rarely on speaking terms, and if not open enemies, they are at least rivals. The people nickname these foreigners Kurára Kurára—to sleep! to sleep! ‘rárá’ being the Asiatic mispronunciation of lálá. Boasting themselves to be Baloch, they are mostly from the regions about Kech and Bampur: they are mixed up with a rabble rout of Arabs and Afghans, of Sidis[^[34]] and Hindostan men. The corps spoke some half-a-dozen different languages, and many of the members have left their country for their country’s good—a body of convicts, however, generally fights well. The Mekrani especially are staunch men behind walls, and if paid, drilled, and officered, they would make as ‘varmint’ light-bobs as any Arnauts. They have a knightly fondness for arms: a ‘young barrel and an old blade’ are their delight: like schoolboys, they think nothing so fine as the report of a gun; consequently ammunition is kept by the C. O., and is never served out except before a fight. All use the matchlock: while good shots are rare, many are tolerably skilful with sword and shield. Their nominal pay is from $2 to $3 per mensem, a pittance of some 20 pice (120 pice=$1) per diem: this must find them in clothes and rations as well as in arms; often there is not a sandal amongst them, and they are as ragged a crew as ever left the barren wolds of Central Asia in quest of African fortune. They live in tattered hovels, which they build for themselves, upon one meal a day, which is shared by their slave concubines. To the natural greed of mountain-races, the poor devils who come in horse and salt-boats, and act barbers and sailors, porters, labourers, and date-gleaners, add the insatiable desires of beggars. The Banyans have a proverb that a Baloch, a Brahman, and a buck-goat eat the trees to which they are tied. Sudden and sharp in quarrel, they draw their daggers upon the minutest provocation; they have no mitigation nor remorse of voice, and they pray in the proportion of one to a dozen. Africa is to them what the Caucasus is to the Russians, Kabylie to the French, and Sind to the English soldier. All look forward to ‘Hindostan—bagh o bostan,’ India the flower-garden; but the Arabs have a canny proverb inporting that the fool who falleth into the fire rarely falleth out of it.

Fraudare stipendio, saith ancient Justin, was the proverb of the Great King’s satraps: the custom has been religiously preserved by the modern East. Each station is commanded by a Jemadar, who receives $4 to $5 per month, and ample license to pay himself by peculation. This class is at once under-salaried, and over-trusted. The Jemadar advances money upon usury to his men; he keeps them six months in arrears, and not a few of them never see the colour of Government coin from the year’s beginning to the end. He exacts perquisites from all who fear his hate and who need his aid; and he falsifies the muster-rolls impudently and with impunity, giving 25 names to perhaps four men. Thus, like the Turkish Colonel of Nizam, the Jemadar lives in great state. He has a wife or two, and perhaps a dozen slaves; he sports a fine coat of scarlet broadcloth, a silver-hilted sword and dagger, and a turban of rich silk. He keeps flocks of sheep and goats, and he trades with the interior for ivory and captives. Such has been, such is, and such ever will be till Europe steps in, that false economy which throughout the ‘East,’ from Stambul to Japan, grasps the penny and flings away the pound. It is a state inseparable from the conditions of society and of government, where public servants are not paid, they must, of course, pay themselves; and they often prefer the latter mode, as they pay themselves far better than they would otherwise be paid. About a century ago we did the same thing in India, where men amassed fortunes, and until the late reforms, such was notoriously the case throughout the Russian empire. Perhaps in the present day the best place to study the system of all peculation and no pay is Damascus.

Having confided our project to the Jemadar of Chogwe, he promised his good-will—for a consideration. He undertook to start us the next day, and, curious to relate, for as usual he was a Cathaian of the first water, he kept his word. The small garrison, however, could afford but four matchlock-men as a guard, and the same number of slave-boys acting porters. The C. O., therefore, engaged for us, nominally paying $10, and doubtless retaining one half, a couple of guides, who proved to be a single guide and his chattel.

After a night spent in the Maychan, where wind, dust, and ants conspired to make us miserable, we arose to prepare for marching. We reduced our kit to the strictest necessaire, surveying instruments, weapons, waterproof blankets, tea, sugar, and tobacco for ten days, a bag of dates, and three bags of rice. About noon, issuing from our shed, we placed the baggage in the sun; thus mutely appealing to the ‘Sharm’—shame or sense of honour—possessed by our Baloch employés. A start was not effected till 5 P.M.; every slave grumbling loudly at his load, snatching up the lightest of packs, fighting to avoid the heavier burdens, and rushing forward regardless of what was left behind. This nuisance endured till abated by an outward application easily divined. I had only to hope that after a march or two the scramble would subside into something like order. At length, escorted in token of honour by the consumptive Jemadar and most of his company, we set out, in a straggling Indian file, towards Tongwe.

The track wound over stony ridges, and after an hour it plunged into a dense, thorny thicket, which during the rains must be impassable. The evening belling of the deer and the near ‘clock clock’ of the partridge struck our ears pleasantly. In open places lay the dry lesses of elephants, and footprints retained by the last year’s mud: these animals, as in the Harar country, descend to the plains during the rainy monsoon, and when the heats set in retire to the cool hills—a regular annual migration. The Baloch shoot, the wild people kill them with poisoned arrows. More than once during our march we found the gravelike trap-pits in India called Ogi. They are wedge-shaped holes 10 feet deep, artfully placed in the little rises frequented by the beasts, and the size must exactly fit the victim, which easily extricates itself from one too large or too small: if fairly jammed, however, it cannot escape. We did not sight a single specimen; but judging from the footprints—three to three and a half circumferences showing the shoulder-height—the elephant here is not of tall stature. From the further interior come tusks commonly weighing 100 lbs. each; those of 175 lbs. are not rare, and I have heard of a par nobile sent from Delagoa Bay to the King of Portugal, whose joint weight was 560 lbs. We also saw many traces of lion, antelope, and wild cattle, here called buffalo. It was a severe disappointment to us that we could not revisit, as we had promised ourselves, this country during the rains; but Lieut.-Col. Hamerton strongly dissuaded us from again risking jungle fever; and we had other work to do in Inner Africa. Sporting, indeed, must occupy the whole man, and even to shoot for specimens is often to waste time in two ways. The ‘serious traveller’ must indulge himself by taking at times a week or a fortnight’s leave from geographical[geographical] work, and even then he will frequently find circumstances interfere with his plans. Throughout our march in these regions game was rarely seen; none lives where the land is peopled; in the parts near the stations it is persecuted by the Baloch, and the wild Jägers will kill and eat even rats. We heard, however, many tales of Mabogo, or wild cattle, and of lions; of leopards in plenty; of a hog, probably the masked boar; amongst many antelopes, of one resembling the Nilghai (A. Picta), and of an elk said to be like the Sambar of Hindostan.

Another hour’s marching, and a total of six miles, as shown by the pedometer, brought us to the Makam Sayyid Sulayman, a partially cleared ring in the thorny jungle. It was bounded on one side by a rocky and tree-fringed nullah, where water stagnates in pools during the dry season; and here ensued a comical scene. The whole party went to drink, when suddenly all began to dance and shout like madmen, pulling off their clothes and frantically snatching at their lower limbs. It was our first experience of that formican fiend, the bull-dog ant (Siyáfú or Ch’hungu Fundo),[^[35]] black, and a good half inch long, which invariably reserves its attentions for the tenderest portions of the person attacked. The bite of this wretch, properly called ‘atrox,’ burns like the point of a red-hot needle, and whilst engaged in its cannibal meal, literally beginning to devour man alive, even when its doubled-up body has been torn from the head, the pincers will remain embedded in flesh. Moreover, there are the usual white ants (Ch’hungu Mchwa, Termes fatalis), death upon your property; the ginger-coloured Ch’hungu ya moto, whose name ‘fire-ant’ describes its bite, and the hopper ant, who, like the leopard, takes a flying leap from the nearest branch, and cleverly alighting upon the victim, commences operations. And where the ant is in legions, one of the most troublesome is the smelling ant (Ch’hungu Uvundo), which suggests that carrion is concealed behind every bush. Verily, in Africa, as was said of the Brazil, the ant is king, and he rules like a tyrant.

We spent the night in a small Babel of Baloch. It was a savage opera scene. One recited his Koran, another prayed, a third told funny stories, whilst a fourth trolled out in minor key lays of love and war, made familiar to my ear upon the rugged Sindian hills. This was varied by slapping away the lank mosquitoes that flocked to the gleaming camp-fires, by rising occasionally to rid ourselves of the ants, and by challenging the small parties of savages who, armed with bows and arrows, passed amongst us, carrying grain to Panga-ni. The Baloch kept a truly oriental watch. They sang and shouted, and they carefully fed the camp fire during early night, when there is no danger; but all slept like the dead through the ‘small hours,’ the time always chosen by the African freebooters, and indeed by almost all savages, to make their unheroic onslaughts. Similarly, throughout our expedition to the Lake Regions, the ‘soldiers’ never dreamed of any precaution whilst in dangerous regions. As we approached the coast, however, sentinels were carefully set, that all might be well which ends well.

At daybreak on February 9, accompanied by a much reduced detachment, we resumed our march: the poitrinaire Jemadar, who was crippled by the moonlight and by the cold dew, resolved, when thawed, to return with the rest of his company Chogwe-wards. An hour’s hard walking brought us to the foot of rugged Tongwe, the Great Hill. Ascending the flank of the N. Eastern spur, we found ourselves at 8 A.M., after five or six bad miles, upon the chine of a little ridge, with summer facing the sea, and a wintry wind blowing from the deep and forested valley to landward. Thence, pursuing the rugged incline, after another half-hour we entered the ‘fort,’ a crenellated, flat-roofed, and whitewashed room, 14 feet square, supported inside by smooth blackened rafters. It was tenanted by two Baloch, who figure on the muster-rolls as 20 men. They complain of loneliness and of the horrors: though several goats have been sacrificed, an obstinate demon still haunts the hill, and at times the weeping and wailing of distressed spirits makes their thin blood run chill from their hearts.

Tongwe is the first offset of the massive mountain-terrace which forms the Region of Usumbara: here, in fact, begins the Highland block of Zangian and equatorial Africa, which culminates in Kilima-njaro and Doenyo Ebor, or Mount Kenia. It rises abruptly from the plain, and projects long spurs into the river valley, where the Panga-ni flows noisily through a rocky trough, and whence we could distinctly hear the roar of the celebrated waterfall. Situated N. West of (324°), and nine miles as the crow flies from, Chogwe, the hill summit, about 2000 feet above sea-level, is clothed with jungle, through which we had to cut a way with our swords, when seeking compass bearings of the Nguru hills. The thickness of the vegetation, which contains stunted cocoas, oranges grown wild and bitter, the Castor shrub, the Solanum, and the bird-pepper plant, with small berry, but very hot i’ the mouth, renders the eminence inaccessible from any but the Eastern and Northern flanks. The deserted grounds showed signs of former culture, and our negro guide sighed as he told us that his kinsmen had been driven by the Wazegura from their ancient seats to the far inner wilds. Around the Fort were slender plantations of maize and manioc springing amongst the ‘black jacks,’ which here, as in the Brazil, are never removed. The surface is a reddish, argillaceous, and vegetable soil, overlying grey and ruddy granite and schists. These rocks bear the ‘gold and silver complexion’ which was fatal to Colin Clout, the chivalrous ‘Shepherd of the Ocean,’ and the glistening spangles of mica still feed the fancy of the pauper Baloch mercenary. Below Tongwe hill, a deep hole in the northern face supplies the sweetest ‘rock-water,’ and upon the plain a boulder of well-weathered granite, striped with snowy quartz, contains two crevices ever filled by the purest springs. The climate appeared delicious, temperate in the full blaze of an African and tropical summer, and worthy of verse—

‘Fair is that land as evening skies,

And cool though in the depths it lies

Of burning Africa.’

The temperature would correspond with a similar altitude upon the Fernando Po and the Camarones peaks. But whilst the hill was green the lower lands were baked like bread crust—the ‘fertile and flourishing regions about Tongwe’ belong to the category of things gone by.

We had much to do before leaving Tongwe. The Jemadar had, it is true, ordered for us an escort, but in these latitudes obedience to orders is an optional matter. Moreover, the Baloch, enervated by climate and by long habits of utter indolence, looked forward with scant pleasure to the discomforts of a mountain march. Shoeless, bedless, and almost ragless, they could hardly be induced, even by the offer of ‘stone dollars,’ to quit for a week their hovel homes, their black Venuses, and their whitey-brown piccaninnies. They felt truly happy with us at Tongwe, doing nothing beyond devouring, twice a day, vast quantities of our dates and rice, an unknown luxury; and they were at infinite pains to defer the evil hour of departure. One fellow declared it was absolutely impossible for him to travel without salt, and proposed sending back a slave to Chogwe: the move would have involved the loss of at least three days, so we thought it best at once to begin with firmly saying no.

By hard talking I managed at last to secure a small party, which demands a few words of introduction to the reader—it is the typical affair in this part of Africa, and the sketch may be useful to future travellers. We have four slave boys, idle, worthless dogs, who never work save under the rod, who think of nothing beyond their stomachs, and who are addicted to running away upon all occasions. Petty pilferers to the backbone, they steal, magpie-like, by instinct, and from their impudent fingers nothing is safe. On the march they lag behind to see what can be ‘prigged,’ and not being professional porters, they are as restive as camels when receiving their loads. ‘Am I not a slave?’ is their excuse for every detected delinquency, and we must admit its full validity. One of these youths happening to be brother-in-law—after a fashion—to the Jemadar, requires almost superhuman efforts to prevent him loading the others with his own share.

The guide, Muigni Wazira, is a huge broad-shouldered, thick-waisted, large-limbed Msawahili, with coal black skin and straight features, massive and regular, which look as if cut in jet; a kind of face that might be seen on the keystone of an arch. He frowns like the Jann spoken of in the Arabian Nights, and he often makes me wish for a photographer. He is purblind, a defect which does not, however, prevent his leading us by the shortest path into every village that aspires to mulct our slender store of sprig-muslin. Wazira is our rogue, rich in all the perfections of African cunning. A prayerless Sherif, he utterly despises all Makafiri or infidels; he has a hot temper, and when provoked he roars like a wild beast. He began by stubbornly refusing to carry any load; but he yielded when it was gently placed upon his heavy shoulder, with a significant gesture in case of recusance. He does not, however, neglect to pass it occasionally to his slave, who, poor wretch, is almost broken down by the double burden.

Rahmat the Mekrani calls himself a Baloch, and bears the proud title of Shah-Sawar, or the Rider King. He is the Chelebi, the dandy or tiger of the party. A good-looking brown man, about 25 years of age, with a certain affectation and girlishness of speech and tournure which bode no good, the Rider King deals in the externals of respectability: he washes and prays with artificial regularity; he is ever combing his long hair and beard; he trains his bushy mustache to touch his eyes, and he binds on crookedly a huge turban. His cue is to affect the Jemadar, to take command. He would have monopolized, had I permitted him, the general store of gunpowder, a small leathern bottle wrung from the C. O. at Chogwe: and having somewhat high-flown ideas of discipline, he began by stabbing a slave-boy. He talks loud in his nasal native Balochki, debased Persian, ridiculous Arabic, and voluble Kisawahili; moreover, his opinion is ever to the fore. The Rider King, pleading soldier, refuses to carry anything but his matchlock and a private stock of dates, which he keeps ungenerously to himself. He boasts of prowess in vert and venison: I never saw him hit the mark, but we missed some powder and ball, with which perhaps he may be more fortunate. Literally, he was not worth his salt. Yet this knave had resolved to force himself upon me when in June I set out for the Lake Regions, and made a show of levelling his old shooting-iron. For sixpence a shot he might have fired ad libitum.

Hamdan, a Maskat Arab, has seen better days, of which strong waters and melancholia have removed all traces except a tincture of lettres. Our Mullah, or chaplain-and-secretary, is small, thin, brown-skinned, long-nosed, and green-eyed, with little spirit and less muscularity. A crafty old traveller, he has a store of creature comforts for the journey: he carries with his childish match-lock a drinking gourd and a Ghi-pot, and for more reasons than one he sits apart at the camping ground. Strongly contrasting with him is the ancient Mekrani Sha’ahan, a decrepit giant with the negroid type of countenance, pockmarked, and ugly enough to frighten. He is of the pig-headed, opposed to the soft-brained, order of old man, hard and opinionated, selfish and unmanageable. He smokes, and must drink water throughout the livelong day. He dispenses the wisdom of a Dogberry, whereat all laugh; and much to the disgust of his hearers, he either coughs or snores during the hours of night. This senior will carry nothing but his long greasy gun, gourd, and pipe; and, despite his grey beard, he is the drone of our party.

Jemal and Murad Ali are our working men, excellent specimens of the true Baloch, vieux grognards, with a grim sour humour, something like ‘wut,’ especially when the fair sex and its backslidings are concerned. They have dark frowning faces, wrinkled and rugged as their natal hills, with pads of muscle upon their short forearms and sinewy angular calves, remarkable in this land of sheepshanks. Sparing of words, they grunt the shortest answers when addressed; if they speak at all, it is in a roar or a scream: they are angry men, uncommonly handy with their well-polished daggers, and they think as little of cutting a negro’s as a sheep’s throat. At the promise of an extra dollar they walk off under heavy loads, besides carrying their arms and necessaries. These two, in fact, are good men and true.

The gem of the party, however, is one Sidi Mubarak, who has taken to himself the agnomen of ‘Bombay.’ His sooty skin, and teeth sharp-pointed like those of the reptilia, denote his origin from Uhiao: he is one of those model Seedies, runaway slaves, employed as lascars and coal-trimmers, who with chaff, grimace, and peals of laughter, varied now and then by dance and song, delight the passengers in an Anglo-Indian steamer. Bombay, sold at Kilwa in early youth, a process of which he talks with many broad grins, was carried to Cutch by some Banyan, and there became a libertinus: he looks fondly back upon the hour of his adoption, and he sighs for the day when a few dollars will enable him to return. His head is a triumph to phrenology; a high narrow cranium, denoting by arched and rounded crown, fuyant brow and broad base with full development of the moral region, deficiency of the reflectives, fine perceptives, and abundant animality. His hair is of the woolliest: his twinkling little eyes are set close together, and his lips and expansive mouth, especially in rare fits of ill-temper, project as in the cynocephali. He works on principle and he works like a horse, candidly declaring that not love of us but his duty to his belly make him work. With a sprained ankle and a load quite disproportioned to his chétif body, he insists upon carrying two guns, and after a 30 miles’ walk he is as fresh as before it began. He attends us everywhere, manages our purchases, carries all our messages, and when not employed by us, he is at every man’s beck and call. Speaking a little broken Hindostani, he has for all ‘jungly niggers’ an ineffable contempt, which he never attempts to conceal. He had enlisted under the Jemadar of Chogwe: we thought, however, so highly of his qualifications, that persuasion and paying his debts induced him after a little coqueting to take leave of soldiering and to follow our fortunes. He began by escorting us to Fuga as head gun-carrier: on our march to the Lakes he was the confidential servant and interpreter of my companion, he being the only man with whom the latter could converse, and in the Second Expedition of Capts Speke and Grant he was promoted to command the Wasawahili. Almost every black brain would have been turned by this rapid and dazzling rise: Sidi Mubarak Bombay did not, however, as I had anticipated, ‘prove himself a failure in the end.’

A machine so formed could hardly be expected to begin work without some creaking. The Baloch were not entirely and solely under us, and in the East no man will, even if he can, serve two masters. For the first few days many a muttered cursing and loud wrangling showed signs of dissolution. One would not proceed because the Rider King kept the gunpowder, another started on his way home because he was refused some dates, and, during the night after departure, all Bombay’s efforts, we afterwards heard, were in requisition to prevent a break-up en masse. But by degrees the component parts fitted smoothly and moved steadily, till at last we had little to complain of, and the men volunteered to follow wherever we might lead. By acting upon the old Oriental principle, ‘the word is gone forth and must be heard,’ we never failed to win a disputed point, and one success paved the way for others. Amongst these perverse and headstrong races, however, the traveller must be careful in committing himself to an ultimatum, and he must be prepared when he says he will do a thing, to do it. Otherwise he will speedily lose caste, and caste once lost is not to be regained—in Africa or, perhaps, elsewhere.

NOTE.

Since these pages were written, Sidi Mubarak Bombay has been made Chief of Caravan by Mr Stanley of New York, who is now (December 10, 1871) marching upon the Tanganyika Lake in quest of Dr Livingstone.

CHAPTER VII.
THE MARCH TO FUGA. ASCENT OF THE HIGHLANDS
OF EAST AFRICA. PRESENTATION TO
KING KIMWERE.

Es gibt in Central Afrika Paradiese, die mit der Zeit die Civilisation aussuchen wird zum Besten der Menschheit.[Menschheit.]—J. von Müller.

On February 10, after a night of deep wilderness-silence, we arose betimes, and applied ourselves to the task of porterage. The luggage was again reduced—now to the very lowest expression. For observations we carried sextant and horizon, two compasses and stand, and a common and a boiling-point thermometer.[^[36]] A waterproof carpet-bag contained journals and materials for writing and sketching. Our arms were a six-shooter each (4 lbs. 1 oz.), a Colt’s rifle (10 lbs. 8 oz.), a small Büchse by Nowotny of Vienna (8 lbs. 3 oz.), a shot-gun (W. Richards, 11 lbs.), three swords, and two bowie-knives; in fact, fighting gear, with the ammunition necessary for ourselves and men. A solid leather portmanteau was stuffed with a change of raiment and a gift for Sultan Kimwere, namely a coat of black broadcloth ($12), eight turbans of sprig muslin ($8), a similar number of Surat embroidered caps ($8), and two light-coloured cotton shawls of trifling value. Our provisions consisted of three bags of rice ($12.50), a sack of dates ($2.25), onions, manioc, flour, tea, and sugar, for 10 days; tobacco, pepper and salt, of which none is procurable in the interior; a lamb, three chickens, and a bottle of cognac, to be used in case of need. Our beds were in waterproofs, which might also be converted into tents and awnings; a horn lantern, wax candles, and a policeman’s dark-lantern, were added for night-work, whilst a portable tin canteen, with a Papin’s digester, completed the equipment. What we chiefly wanted were water-skins, beads, and ‘domestics;’ and this we presently found to our cost.

It was 6 A. M. before we were free to follow the thorny goat-track which leads down the N. Eastern spur of Mount Tongwe. By dint of fighting our way through rushes and tiger-grass, we struck into the Panga-ni road, and after three hours’ winding to the north-west, we rested at some fetid pools in a reed-grown fiumara. The sun began to sting, and we had already occupied the shadow of a tall rock, intending to doze till the afternoon, when Wazira, who had disappeared in the morning after hearing the growling of a lion, returned to us, and for reasons of his own, induced us to advance by promising better water. The path ran over stony ground, at times plunging into the forest; there were frequent thorny ridges, and narrow green dales or rather ravines, bordered with lovely amphitheatres of lofty and feathery tropical trees, showing signs of inundation during the rains. But the Kazkazi, or N. East monsoon, had dried up the marrow of the land, and though we searched secundum artem, as for treasure, we found no water.

Noon came, and the sun towered in its pride of place. Even whilst toiling up the stony, dusty track, over a series of wearisome, monotonous slopes, unvisited by the cool sea-breeze, we could not but remark the novel aspect of the land. The ground was brick-red, a favourite colour in Africa as in the Brazil, and its stain extended half-way up the tree-boles, which the ants had streaked with ascending and descending galleries. Overhead floated, cloud-like, a filmy canopy of sea-green verdure, pierced by myriads of little sun pencils; whilst the effulgent dome, purified as with fire from mist and vapour, set the picture in a frame of gold and ultramarine. Painful splendours! The men began to drop off. None but Hamdan had brought a gourd. Sha’aban clamoured for water. Wazira, and the four slave-boys, retired to some puddle, a discovery which they sensibly kept to themselves, leaving the rest of the party to throw themselves upon the hot ground, and to cower under tree and bush.

As the sun sank westward, Wazira joined us with a mouthful of lies, and the straggling line advanced. Our purblind guide once more lagged in the rear, yielding the lead to old Sha’aban. This worthy, whose wits were absorbed in visions of water, strode blunderingly ahead over the hills and far away, guided by the Khombora cone. My companion, keeping him in sight, and I being in rear of both, we all three missed the path, and shortly after sunset we reached a narrow fiumara. Here stood, delightful sight! some puddles, bright-green with chickweed and brown-black with the mire below. We quenched our thirst, and bathed our swollen feet, and patted, and felt, and handled the fluid, as though we loved it. But even this charming occupation had an end, and other thoughts suggested themselves. Our shots and shouts remained unanswered, and it would have been the merest midsummer-madness to have wandered in the dubious moonlight about the thorny, pathless jungle. We therefore kindled a fire, looked to our weapons, chose a soft sandy place under the bank, and certain that Sha’aban would tend the fire like a Vestal virgin, we were soon lulled to sleep by the music of the breeze, and by the frogs chaunting their ancient querele upon the miry margin of the pools. That day’s work had been only three leagues and a bittock. But—

‘These high, wild hills, and rough, uneven ways

Draw out the miles:’

it seemed as though we had marched double distance; a circumstance which the young African traveller would do well to note.

At dawn, after our supperless bivouac, we retraced our steps, and soon came upon our people, who shouted aloud, Khayr! Khayr! They had taken the northern path, and they had nighted also near water, upon the upper course of the fiumara which gave us hospitality. The Nyuzi is a rocky bed about 20 feet broad, showing traces of violent periodical freshets, edged with thick trees, gummy acacias, wild mulberries, and large wood-apples (Feronias). Even in the driest season it preserves pools, sometimes 100 feet long, and water is always procurable by digging in the sand. The banks shelter various birds and antelopes. We found doves, kites, and curlews, whilst large iguanas congregated around the water to dine upon the fish-fry which die of heat in the sun-scalded shallows.

After shaking hands all around, and settling sundry small disputes about the right and the wrong, we spread our mats in the grateful shade, and made up for the past with tea and tobacco. During the day our Baloch shaved one another’s heads, and plaited Sawás, or sandals of palm-leaf. The guide engaged, as extra porters, five wild men, habited in the simplest attire—a kilt of dried grass, with the upper ends woven into a cord of the same material. This thatch, fastened round the waist, extended to mid-thigh: it is cool, clean, and certainly as decent as the garb of the Gael. All had bows and poisoned arrows, except one, who boasted of a miserable musket and of literally a powder-horn, the vast spoils of a cow, slung across his shoulder. The wretches were lean as wintry wolves, and not less ravenous. We fed them with rice and Ghi: of course they asked for more, till their stomachs, before shrunken like empty bladders, stood out in the shape of little round lumps from the hoop work of ribs. We had neglected to take their arms by way of pledges to the contract: after amply feeding they arose, and with small, beady eyes twinkling at the practical joke, they bade us adieu. Though starving, they would not work! A few hours afterwards they fell in with the hippopotamus, for which they were waiting, as it passed from the feeding-grounds to its day-home in the stream. Behemoth is a helpless beast on dry land. He was presently surrounded by his enemies, porcupined with arrows, and soon nothing of him remained but a heap of bones and a broad stain of blood.

We rested till 3.15 P.M. in the grateful shade, and then, persuading our carriers to load one another, an operation still of some difficulty, we advanced over a path dented by the spoor of wild cattle. The rolling ground was a straggling thorn-jungle, a ‘forest without shade,’ studded with bright blossoms: the usual black-jacks were scattered about a plain, fired to promote the growth of fodder, and ant-hills rose regularly like Irish ‘fairy-mounts,’ as if disposed by the hand of art. Needless to say that all was desert of man. The Khombora Cone fell far behind: the walls of Usagama, whose peaks, smoking by day and burning by night, resembled fumaroles from afar, changed their blue tints first for brown and then for a distinct green hue. At length, emerging from the wood, we debouched upon an alluvial plain, and sighted the welcome river flashing light through its setting of emerald trees, as it mirrored the westing orb of day. At 6 P.M., after a 10-mile walk, traversing the tall rushes, young trees, and thick underwood of the bank, we found ourselves opposite Kohode, the village of a friendly Mzegura chief. ‘Sultan Mamba’ having recognized the Baloch, forthwith donned his scarlet cloak, superintended the launching of the village canoe from its cajan house; stood surrounded by the elders watching our transit, and, as we landed, wrung our hands with rollicking greetings, and with those immoderate explosive cachinnations, which render the African family to all appearance so ‘jolly’ a race.

The Thursday was a halt at Kohode. It is the normal cultivator’s hamlet of these regions, built upon the tall and stiff clay bank of the Panga-ni river, here called the Rufu or Lufu. According to the people this would mean death or destruction, no bad description of a stream swarming with crocodiles, and we find the dissyllable commencing many riverine names, as Rufiji, Rufuma, and Rufuta. From without the settlement has a pleasant appearance of seclusion and rural comfort: it suggested a village in the Tirhai or the Dehra Dhun: there was the same peaceful quiet look, sheltered situation, and circle of tall forest. Rendered invisible till near by screening tree, bush, and spear grass, it is protected by a stout palisade of trunks, and this, in directions where foes, human or bestial, may be expected, is doubled and trebled. The entrances, in the shape of low triangles, formed by inclining the posts en chevron, lead to a heap of wattle and dab huts, here square, there round: they are huddled together, but where space allows they are spread over a few hundred feet. Goats, sheep, and black cattle, which, contrary to the custom of Guinea, thrive beyond the coast, are staked near or inside the owners’ habitations. From the deep strong-flowing Rufu, running purple, like Adonis after rains, with the rich loam of the hills, and here about 80 yards wide, a bathing-place is staked off, against the hippopotamus and the crocodile. Our Baloch, who hold, with all Orientials, that drinking the element at night impairs digestion, make of this an exception: and my companion, an old Himalayan, thought that he could detect in it the peculiar rough smack of snow water. The stream is navigable, but boats are arrested by the falls below, and portages are not yet known in East Africa.

The villagers are cultivators, tame, harmless heathen, to all but one another: unfortunately they have become masters of muskets, and they use the power to plunder, and oppress those who have it not. ‘Sultan Mamba,’ the crocodile,[^[37]] a stout, jolly, beardless young black, with the laugh of a boatswain, and the voice of one calling in the wilderness, has made himself a thorn in Kimwere’s side. In supplying us with beef and milk, he jerked his thumb back towards the blue hills of Usumbara, upon whose mountain-pass the smoke of watch-fires curled high, and declared, with gusto, that we had already become the hill-king’s guests. Our Baloch guard applauded this kindred soul, clapped him upon the shoulder, and swore that with a score of men-at-arms like themselves he might soon make himself monarch of all the mountains.

‘Sultan Mamba’ once visited Zanzibar, where his eyes were at once opened to Koranic truth by the Kazi Muhiyy el Din: this distinguished Msawahili D. D. conferred upon the neophyte the name of Abdullah bin Muhiyy el Din, and thus called him son. But the old Mamba returned strong upon Abdullah when he sniffed once more his natal air: he fell away from prayer and ablution and grace generally, to the more congenial practices of highwaying and of hard drinking. This amiable youth, who was endowed with an infinite power of surprise and an inveterate itching for beggary, sat with us half the day and inspected our weapons for hours, wondering how he could obtain something of the kind. He asked at one time for the Colt, at another for a barrel of gunpowder: now he offered to barter slaves for arms and ammunition, and when night fell he privily sent Hamdan to request a bottle of cognac. All these things were refused in turn, and the Sultan was fain to be content with two caps, a pair of muslins, and a cotton shawl. He seriously advised us to return with some twenty kegs of the best gunpowder, which, as the article was ever in demand, would bring, he assured us, excellent business in ‘black diamonds.’ He stated that his people had but three wants—powder, ball, and brandy, and that they could supply in return three things—men, women, and children. Our parting was truly pathetic. He swore that he loved us, and promised us on the down march the use of his canoe. But when we appeared with empty hands, and neither caps nor muslins remained, Sultan Mamba scarcely deigned to notice us, and the river became a succession of falls and rapids.

After a night, in which the cimex lectularius had by a long chalk the advantage of the drowsy god, we were ferried at 7 A.M., on February 13, across the stream, attended by sundry guides. The start was generally too late. A seasoned traveller easily bears scorching heat if he sets out with the dawn and works into the sultry hours: after a morning spent in the shade he will suffer more or less severely from sudden exposure. From Kohode, which is more than half way, there are two roads to Fuga. The direct line, running nearly due north, crosses the Highlands: at this season it is waterless. That along the river is more than double the length: it begins to the N. West and then turns sharply to the East. We determined to see the stream, and we doubted the power of our heavily-laden men to front the passes in such heat: the worst of these walking journeys is that the least accident disables the traveller, and accidents will happen to the best of marching parties.

Presently emerging from the thicket, we fell into the beaten track over the dark alluvial river-plain, which here, as at Chogwe, must during rains be a sheet of water. This is the first section of our line; the second will be the red land with rises and falls, but gently upsloping to the west, whilst the third and last will be the granite and sandstone flanks of Usumbara. After a few minutes’ march we crossed by a bridge composed of a fallen tree the Luangera (miscalled Luere by Herr Augustus Petermann): this deep sullen affluent of the Rufu, 23 to 24 feet broad, drains the North-Eastern Bamburri mountains. Then stretching over the grassy expanse, we skirted two small red cones, the Ngua outliers of the high Vugiri range. Like its eastern neighbour Usagama, this buttress of Usumbara is the normal precipice with bluff sides of rock, well wooded on the summit, and looking a proper place for ibex: of this animal, a well-marked species (C. Walie), with thick and prominently ribbed horns, has been found in the snowy heights of Abyssinia, and it probably extends to the gigantic peaks of the Æthiopic Olympus. The Vugiri forms part of the escarpment line separating the highlands from the river plain to the south. The people assured us that the summit is a fertile rolling plateau which supports an abundant population of Washenzi, serfs, and clients, subject to King Kimwere.

We then entered upon cultivated ground, which seemed a garden after the red waste below Tongwe. Cocoas and tall trees concealed the Rufu, which above its junction with the Luangera becomes a mere mountain-torrent, roaring down a rocky, tortuous bed, and forming green, tufted islets, which are favourite sites for settlements. We can hardly, however, call them, with Boteler, an archipelago. Our guides presently took leave, alleging a blood-feud with the neighbouring villagers. The people, as we passed by, flocked over their rude bridges, which extend up coast to Brava, floors of narrow planks laid horizontally upon rough piers of cocoa-trunks, forked to receive cross-pieces, and planted a few feet apart. The structure is parapeted with coarse basket-work, and sometimes supplied with fibrous creepers, jungle-ropes, knotted in 20 places, by way of hand-rail. These the number and daring of the crocodiles render necessary. I was once innocently sitting upon a slab of stone surrounded by the water, and greatly enjoying the damp and the coolth, when, with a rush and a roar, as if it had been an attack, my men fell upon me, and hurried me to the bank. All here believe that the crocodile sweeps off its prey with a blow of the powerful tail, and once in the water, man is helpless against the big lizard. These constructions are at least more artful than the Pingela or single plank of the Brazil, and the tight-rope affairs of the Himalayas: they must much resemble the bridges of inner Devonshire, that ‘sleeping beauty of the (near) West,’ during the days of our grandfathers. Cows, goats, and long-tailed sheep clustered upon the plains, and gave a pastoral aspect to the out-of-the-way scene.

We halted from 10 A. M. to 4 P. M., under a spreading tamarind, near Zafura, a village on an island of the Panga-ni, distant about two miles from Mount Vugiri. Here we were surrounded by crowds, who feasted their eyes upon us for consecutive hours. They were unarmed and dressed in skins; they spoke the Kizegura dialect, which differs greatly from the Kisawahili; and they appeared rather timid than dangerous. Their sultan stalked about, spear in hand, highly offended by our not entering his hut, and dropping some cloth; whilst sundry Wasawahili in red caps looked daggers at the white interlopers. We tried to hire extra porters, but having neither Merkani (American domestics) nor beads, we notably failed.

Presently black nimbi capped the hill-tops, cooling the fierce Sirocco, and the low growling of distant thunder warned us forwards. Resuming our march at 3.30 P. M., we crossed a dry fiumara, trending towards the Rufu. We traversed a hill-spur of rolling and thorny red ground, to avoid a deep loop in the stream; we passed a place were rushes and tiger-grass choked the bed, and where the divided waters, apparently issuing from a black jungle and a dark rock, foamed down a steep and jagged incline. We crossed over two bridges, and at 5 P. M. we entered a village of Wazegura, distant from Kohode 12 miles. Msiki Mguru is a cluster of hay-cock huts touching one another, and built upon an island formed by divers rapid and roaring branches of the river. The headman was sick, but we found a hospitable reception. Uninitiated in the African secret of strewing ashes round the feet of the Kitanda or cartel, we spent our night, although we eschewed the dirty, close huts, battling with ant armies and other little slayers of sleep that shall be nameless. Our hosts, speaking about the Wamasai, expressed great terror, which was justified by the sequel. Scarcely had we left the country, when a band of wild spearmen attacked two neighbouring villages, slaughtered the hapless cultivators, and with pillage and pollage drove off the cattle in triumph. Our hosts watched with astonishment the magical process of taking an altitude of Capella, and they were anxious to do business in female slaves, honey, goats, and sheep. Some of the girls were rather comely, despite the tattoo that looked like boils. None showed the least fear or bashfulness; but when the Baloch chaffed them, and asked how they would like the ‘men in trowsers’ as husbands, they simply replied, ‘Not at all!’

At sunrise on the next morning we resumed our march, following the left bank of the Rufu, which is here called Kirua. For about three miles it is a broad line of flat boulders, thicket, grass, and sedge, with divers trickling streams between. At the Maurwi village the several branches anastomoze, forming a deep and strong but navigable stream, about 30 yards broad, and fenced with bulging masses of vegetation. Thence we bent northward, over rolling ground of red clay, here cultivated, there a thorny jungle, trending to Tamota, another bluff in the hill-curtain of Usumbara. The paths were crowded with a skin-clad and grass-kilted race, chiefly women and small girls; the latter, by-the-by, displaying very precocious developments, and leading children, each with a button of hair left upon its scraped crown. The adults, toiling under loads of manioc, holcus and maize, pumpkins and plantains, poultry, sugar-cane, and water-pots, in which tufts of leaves had been stuck to prevent splashing, were bound for a Golio (market) held in an open place. Here their own land begins: none started at or fled from the white face.

HILLS OF USUMBARA.

The men chip their teeth to points, and, like the Wasumbara, punch out in childhood one incisor from the lower jaw; a piece of dried rush or sugar-cane distends the ear-lobe to an unsightly size. All carried bows and arrows. Some shouldered such hoes and hatchets as English children use upon the sands: here bounteous earth, fertilized by the rains of heaven, requires merely the scratching of a man’s staff. Others led stunted curs, much like the pariah dogs of Hindostan, adorned with leather collars: I afterwards saw similar pets at the Yellalah of the Congo river. The animals are prime favourites with the savages, as were the Spanish puppies in the days of Charles II.; they hold a dog-stew to be a dish fit for a king. In West Africa also the meat finds many admirers, and some missionaries in the Niger regions have described it as somewhat glutinous, but ‘very sweet.’ Why should we not have cynophages as well as hippophages?

The salutations of these savages provoked the comical wrath of Sidi Bombay; and indeed they were not a little ridiculous. Acquaintances stood afar off, as if in fear of each other, and nosed forth ‘Kua-heri,’ and protracted hans and huns, until they had relieved their minds. None, even the women, refused to greet us, and at times Yambo—the state?—was uttered simultaneously by a score of sable lips. Having duly stared and been stared at, we unloaded for rest about 9.30 A. M., under a spreading tree, near the large, double-fenced village of Pasunga, belonging to one of Sultan Kimwere’s multitudinous sons. Again clouds obscured the air, gathering thick upon the mountain-tops, whence came the mutterings of thunder from afar.

Presently the pleasant coolness drew from the Baloch cries of Safar! Safar!—let us march! At 1 P. M. we resumed our way, and presently we passed, on our left hand, a tank of mire and water, thinly sprinkled with paddy-birds, sand-pipers, and Egyptian geese—all exceedingly wild. Hornbills screamed from the neighbouring trees, and on the mud my companion shot a specimen of the gorgeous crested crane, whose back feathers have made bonnets fine. After an hour’s march we skirted a village where the people peremptorily commanded us to halt. We attributed this annoyance to Wazira, who was forthwith visited with a severe wigging. It is, however, partly the custom of the country: and even in the far less barbarous Angola, to pass a farm-house without entering it is to insult the proprietor. Man claims a right to hear from the wandering stranger news—a pabulum which his soul loves: to coin the most improbable nonsense; to be told lies with the bloom on them, and to retail them to his neighbours, are the mental distractions of the idler, equally the primum mobile of a Crimean ‘shave’ and of an African palaver. But the impending rain had sharpened our tempers. We laughed in the faces of our furious expostulators, and bidding them stop us if they could, we pursued our way.

Presently ascending a hill and making an abrupt turn from N. West nearly due East, we found ourselves opposite and about 10 miles distant from a tall azure hill-curtain, the highlands of Fuga. Below, the plain was everywhere populous with scatters of haycock villages. Lofty tamarinds, the large-leaved plantain, and the parasol-shaped papaw grew wild amongst the thorny trees. Water stood in black pools, and around it waved luxuriant sugar-cane: in a moment every mouth was tearing at and chewing the end of a long pole. The cane is of the edible species; the officinal varieties are too luscious, cloying, and bilious to be sucked with impunity by civilized man. After walking that day a total of 16 miles, about 4 P. M. we were driven by a violent storm of thunder, lightning, and raw S. West wind, which at once lowered the mercury several degrees, and caused the slaves to shudder and whimper, into the Banda-ni or Palaver-house of a large village. Our shelter consisted of a thatched roof propped by rough uprights and wanting walls: the floor was half mud, half mould, and the furniture was represented by stone slabs used as hones, and by hollowed logs once bee-hives and now seats. The only tenants were flies and mosquitos. We lighted fires to keep off fevers: this precaution should never be neglected by the African traveller, even during the closest evenings of the tropical hot season. Our Baloch, after the usual wrangle about rations, waxed melancholy, shook their heads, and declared that the Kausi, the S. West trade-wind that brings the wet monsoon, was fast approaching, if, indeed, it had not regularly set in.

Sunday, February 15, dawned with one of those steady little cataclysms, which to be seen advantageously must be seen near the Line. At 11 A.M., thoroughly tired of the steaming Banda-ni, our men loaded, and we set out in a lucid interval towards the highlands. As we approached them the rain shrank to a mere spitting, gradually ceased, and was replaced by that reeking, fetid, sepulchral heat, which travellers in the tropics have learned to fear. The path lay over the normal red clay, crossed low ground where trees decayed in stagnant water, and spanned the cultivated plain of dark mould at the foot of the mountains, with a vista of far blue hill on the right. We rested a few minutes before attempting the steep incline before us: the slippery, muddy way had wearied our slaves, though aided by three porters hired that morning, and the sun, struggling with vapours, was still hot enough to overpower the whole party.

At 1 P. M. we proceeded to breast the pass leading from the lowland alluvial plain to the threshold of the Æthiopic Olympus. The gently-rising path, spread with decayed foliage, wound amongst groves of large, coarse bananas, whose arms of satiny sheen here smoothed and streaked, there shredded by the hill-winds, hid purple flowers and huge bunches of green fruit. The Musa, which an old traveller describes as an assemblage of leaves interwoven and twisted together so neatly, that they form a plant about 15 spans high, is an aboriginal of Hindostan, and possibly of East Africa, where, however, the seeds might easily have been floated from the East: it grows almost spontaneously in Unyamwezi and upon the shores of the great inland lakes. Here the banana,[^[38]] which maturing rapidly affords a perennial supply of fruit, and whose enormous rate of produce has been described by many writers, is the staff of savage life, windy as the acorn which is supposed to have fed our forefathers in Europe. As usual where men are compelled by their wants to utilize a single tree, the cocoa, for instance, or the calabash, these East Africans apply the plantain to a vast variety of uses, and allow no part of it to be wasted. The stem when green gives water enough to quench the wanderer’s thirst and to wash his hands; the parenchyma has somewhat the taste of cucumber, and sun-dried it is employed for fuel. The fresh cool leaves are converted into rain-pipes, spoons, plates, and even bottles: desiccated they make thatch, and a substitute for wrapping-papers; and some have believed that they were the original fig-leaves of the first man and his wife. The trunk-fibre does good service in all the stages between thread and cord: the fruit yields wine, sugar, and vinegar, besides bread and vegetable, and even the flower is reduced to powder and mixed with snuff. Never transplanted and allowed to grow from its own suckers, this banana has now degenerated: it is easy to see, however, that it comes of a noble stock. In parts of the interior the people have during a portion of the year little else to live upon but this fruit, boiled, baked, and dried: it then becomes a nauseating diet, causing flatulence, indigestion, heart-burn, and other gastric evils. After enduring the infliction I never again could look a banana in the face.

Issuing from the dripping canopy, we breasted a steep goat-track, we forded a crystal burn, and having reached the midway we sat down to enjoy the rarified air, which felt as if a weight had been suddenly taken off our shoulders; it was São Paolo after Santos. A palpable change of climate had already taken place, and the sunshine was tempered with clouds which we now blessed. The view before us was extensive and suggestive, if not beautiful. The mountain fell under our feet in rugged folds clothed with patches of plantains, wild mulberries, custard apples, and stately trees whose lustrous green glittered against the red ochreous earth. The sarsaparilla vine hung in clusters and festoons from the high supporting limbs of the tamarind; the tall toddy-palm raised its fantastic arms over the dwarf fan palm, and bitter oranges mingled aroma with herbs not unlike our mint and sage. Opposite and below, half veiled with rank steam, the ‘smokes’ of Western Africa, lay the yellow Nyika and the Wazegura lowlands: it was traversed by a serpentine of trees marking the course of the Mkomafi, an affluent of the lower Panga-ni river. Three dwarf cones, the Mbara Hills, bearing 230° and distant about eight miles, crowned the desert, and far beyond the well-wooded line of the Rufu, a uniform purple plain stretched to the rim of the Southern and Western horizon, as far as our glasses could trace it.

We were startled from our observations by a prodigious hubbub. The three fresh porters positively refused to proceed unless a certain number of cloths were sent forwards to propitiate the magnates of Fuga. This trick was again easily traced to Wazira, who had been lecturing us all the morning upon the serious nature of our undertaking. Sultan Kimwere was a potent monarch, not a Mamba. His ‘ministers’ and councillors would, unless well-paid, avert from us their countenances. We must enter with discharge of musketry to salute the lieges, and by all means we must be good boys and do as we were bid. The Baloch smiled contempt, and pulling up the porters from the ground, loaded them deaf to all remonstrance.

Resuming our march with hearts beating aloud under the unusual exercise, we climbed, rather than walked, up the deep bed of a torrent,—everywhere the primitive zigzag. Villages then began to appear perched like eyries upon the hilltops, and villagers gathered to watch our approach. The Baloch asked us to taste the water of a spring that rose hard by: sparkling in the cup it was icy cold, with a perceptible chalybeate flavour, and the fountain-head was stained with a coat of rust. Eastern, and we may say Southern, Africa from the Equator to the Cape, is a land whose stones are iron, and the people declare that they have dug brass. Copper has been long known, gold even longer, and the diamond, in the South at least, is the discovery of this our day.[^[39]]

At 4 P. M. we stood upon the Pass summit, but we found no tableland, as about Shoa. This patch of highlands, whose limits have been roughly laid down between N. lat. 1° and S. lat. 6°, is to the eastern regions what the massif of the Camarones and its system in N. lat. 5° is to Western Africa. The latter is known to be a volcano, and the former has been also reported of igneous formation;[^[40]] here, however, it appears in the shape of granite and sandstones. Both are abnormal elevations, declining to the coast-fringing ranges, which latter correspond with our Eastern and Western Ghauts of Hindostan, and both, I may venture to predict, will in due time be colonized by white men. In the present day there is no better convict station than the Camarones mountain, and Usumbara might be preferred to the Andamans as a penitentiary for criminals who have deserved the Kálá pání.

The ‘cloud-light’ was that of our English climate: the scenery around us reminded my companion of Almorah, me of the Blue Mountains in Southern India. There were the same rounded cones, fertilized by rainy winds, tapestried with velvety grass, and ribbon’d with paths of red clay; the same ‘Sholas,’ black forest patches clothing the slopes; the same emerald swamps through which transparent runnels continually trickled, and little torrents and rocky linns. Here, however, we find a contrast of aspects: the Northern and Eastern slopes are bluff and barren, whilst the Southern and Western teem with luxuriant vegetation. The reeking and well-irrigated plains to the West are well wooded, and we were shown the water of Masindi, a long narrow tank, upon whose banks elephants, they say, abound. N. Westward the mountains are apparently higher and steeper, and about 10 miles farther West the giant flanks of Makumbara, whose head was capped with cloud-heaps, bound our prospect. We now stood about 4000 feet above sea level; 37 direct miles from the coast, and 74 to 75 along the winding river.

After another three-mile walk along the flanks of domed hills, and crossing a shallow burn which seemed to freeze our parched feet, we turned a corner and suddenly sighted, upon the summit of a grassy cone opposite, an unfenced heap of haycock huts, a cluster of bee-hives with concentric rings—Fuga. As we drew near, our Baloch formed up and fired a volley, which brought out of the settlement the hind and his wife, and his whole meine. This being one of the cities forbidden to strangers, we were led by Wazira through timid crowds, that shrank back as we approached, to four tattered huts, standing about 300 feet below the settlement, and assigned by superstition as a traveller’s bungalow. Even the son and heir of great Kimwere must here abide till the lucky hour admits him to the royal city and presence. The cold rain and the sharp rarified air, which would have been a tonic in a well-appointed sanitarium, rendered any shelter acceptable: we cleared the hovels of sheep and goats, housed our valuables, and sent Sidi Bombay to the Sultan, requesting the honour of an interview.

Before dark appeared three bare-headed Mdoe or Ministers, who declared in a long palaver that council must squat upon two knotty points. Primò, why and wherefore had we entered the king’s country viâ the hostile Wazegura? Secundò, when would his Majesty’s Mganga or Magician priest find an hour propitious for the ceremony? Sharp-witted Hamdan, at once and unprompted, declared us to be also Waganga, men whose powers extended to measuring the moon and stars, and to controlling the wind and rain. Away ran the ministers to report the wonder, and whilst they are absent I will briefly explain what in these regions a Mganga is.

The Mganga in Angola Nganga, called by the Arabs Bassár (seer) and Tabíb (physician), and by us priest, magician, rain-doctor, and medicine-man, combines, as these translations show, medical with supernatural powers: he may be considered the embryo of a sacerdotal order amongst the embryo civilizations of man. Thus Siberia has Shamans, and Greenland Angekoks; North America Medicine-men, and South America Pagés: the Galla believes in his Kalishah, the Kru Republic in her Deyabos, the Congo in Fetish-men, and the Cape Kafirs in witch doctors, who, with certain of the missionaries, have ever been the chief originators of our colonial troubles. In Eastern Africa, from the Somali country southwards, the rains, so wearisome to the traveller, are a boon to the savage, who, especially in the sub-tropical regions and those beyond the path of the sun, sees during droughts his children and cattle dying of hunger and thirst. Rain-charming is the popular belief of Africa, where the new comer’s reception will generally depend upon the state of the weather. The demand produces a supply of intellectuals, who, for the consideration of a lazy monastic kind of life, abundant respect from an ignorant laity, and the great political influence which they command, boldly assert an empire over the meteors. The folly is not confined, be it said, to these barbarous lands: in Ireland the owner of a four-leaved shamrock can or could cause or stop showers, and the Fins on board our ships still deal with the clerk of the weather for fair winds. The Hindu Jogi, the Bayragi, and the Sita-Rami have similar powers: at Porebunder I heard of a man who, when torrents of rain injured the crops, was threatened by the Raja with a ‘cotton coat,’ that is to say, with a padded dressing-gown, well oiled and greased, girt tightly round him, and set on fire. In civilization the last remnant of the barbarous belief is the practice of public prayer for rain, a process far less troublesome and not nearly so efficacious as planting trees and preserving the land from being disforested. During the last threatened drought in Syria the people of Bayrut assembled in the main square, all separated into groups according to their faiths, of which there are a couple of dozen. One party was of children, who, when the seniors failed, thus addressed heaven: ‘O Lord, if Thou disregard the petitions of our parents, they being sinners, and so forth, at least listen to us, being still in our virginal innocence!’ But the rain did not come, and the innocents went away unwhipped. Had the late Fuad Pasha been there he would, before sanctioning the assemblage, have consulted a meteorologist.

Near the Line it is easy to predict rain, and with thermometer and hygrometer—the latter far better than a barometer—man should never make a mistake. The Mganga delays his incantations till mists gather upon the mountain-tops and the Fetish is finished, as the cooling air can no longer support the superabundant moisture. Success brings both solid pudding and empty praise: failure, the trifling inconvenience of changing residence. Amongst the fiercer races, however, the wizard not unfrequently falls a victim to hope deferred, and there are parts of Africa where, as the venerable Mr Moffat says, he seldom, if ever, dies upon his mat.

The Mganga of Usumbara has manifold duties. He must as often be a rain-stopper as a rain-healer. He sprinkles the stranger with the blood of sheep and other medicines, the aspersory being a cow’s tail: upon the departing guest he gently spits, bidding him go in peace and do the people no harm. He marks ivory with magic signs, to ensure the tusk safely reaching the coast. During sickness he lays the ghost or haunting fiend, and applies the rude simples which here act ‘second causes.’ He presides at the savage ordeals. If the Sultan lose health or a villager die, he finds out the guilty one that bewitched the sufferer, and hands him over to the ‘secular arm’ for burning, cutting to pieces, or other such well-merited doom. Here, unless well fee’d, he thrusts into the accused’s mouth a red-hot hatchet, which has no power to burn the innocent or the strong-nerved guilty: in other parts he makes him or her swallow a cup of poison, which is duly tempered for the wealthy. In Usumbara the instrument of his craft is a bundle of small sticks: these form, when thrown upon the ground, certain figures: hence the Arabs translate Báo, or Uganga—the Mganga’s art—by Raml or Geomancy, whose last and ignoblest form is the ‘Book of Fate,’ attributed to Napoleon I. Similarly in Kafir land, sorcerers use sticks or bones, which are supposed to have the power of motion.

The Waganga are mostly open to the persuasions of cloth and beads. One saw the spirit of a pale-face occupying a chair which was brought as a present to King Kimwere, and broadly insinuated that none but the wise deserved such seat. But let not the reader suppose that these men are pure impostors. It would be, indeed, a subtle task to trace how far those who deal in the various mysteries called supernaturalisms are deceived or are deceivers, impostors or believers. Fools and knaves there are, of course, in abundance; but there is a residue, a tertium quid, which is neither one nor the other, and yet which custom and education condemn to act like both. Mental reservation and pious frauds are certainly not monopolized by civilization, nor by any stage of society. There is no folly conceivable by the mind of man in which man has not honestly, firmly, and piously placed his trust. And when man lays down his life, or gives up everything which makes life worth living for, in testimony to his belief, he proves conclusively, not the truth of his tenets, but that he believed them to be true: he compels us to wonder at the obstinacy, rather than to admire the fortitude, of the martyr.

The word Bassár, a seer, forms, I may here remark, a connecting link between the mental sight of the Arabs, the second-sight of Scotland, and, to mention no others, the clairvoyance of modern mesmerism. It alludes to that abnormal exertion of the will, sometimes verging upon the ecstatic state, which enables the brain to behold before it, and without external sight, a panorama of the past, the present and the future; whilst a thousand instances have shown that such scenic exhibitions of things absolutely unknown to the seer have actually come to pass. Almost invariably also the Mganga has, or induces, the ‘disease which precedes the power to divine’; and he attributes it to ancestral ghosts, which would now be called spirits.

At 6 P. M. the ‘Ministers’ ran back, and summoned us, breathless, to the ‘Palace.’ They led the way, through wind, and rain, and gathering gloom, to a clump of the usual huts, half hidden by trees, and spreading over a little eminence opposite to and below Fuga. We were allowed but three Baloch as escort. Their matchlocks were taken away, and a demand was put in for our swords, which of course we insisted upon retaining. The natural suspiciousness of the negro is always exaggerated by being in the neighbourhood of a more advanced race. Here even Hamdan became a Rustam.

Sultan Kimwere half rose from his couch as we entered, and motioned us to sit upon low stools in front of him. The Simba wa Muigni—Lion of the Lord[^[41]]—was an old, old man (un vieux vieux), with emaciated frame, a beardless, wrinkled face like a grandam’s, a shaven head, disfurnished jaws, and hands and feet stained with leprous spots. We saw nothing of the ‘lion-like royal personage,’ the ‘tall and corpulent form with engaging features,’ and the ‘large eyes, red and penetrating, which cast a powerful look’ upon Dr Krapf in September, 1848, when the ‘king’ visited him, with a Highland tail and heralds singing out, ‘O Lion!’ His subjects declare him to be a centagenarian, and he is certainly dying of age and decay—the worst of diseases. The royal dress was a Surat cap much the worse for wear, and a loin-wrap as tattered. He was covered, as he lay upon his Jágá, or cot of bamboo and cowskin, with the doubled cotton cloth called in India a ‘do-pattá,’ and he rested upon a Persian rug apparently coeval with his person.

The hut resembled that of a simple cultivator; possibly it was as good as the palace of wicker-wattles occupied by Henry II. at Dublin. It was redolent of high dignitaries, dirty as their prince, some fanning him, others chatting, and all puffing from long-stemmed pipes with small ebony bowls the Abnús, which, according to the Baloch, is found growing all over the country. Our errand was inquired, and we were duly welcomed to Fuga: as the two Wasawahili secretaries had long ago been dismissed, and none could read the Sayyid of Zanzibar’s introductory letter, I was compelled to act clerk. The centagenarian had heard that we were accustomed to scrutinize trees and stones as well as stars: he therefore decided that we really were European Waganga, or medicine-men, and he directed us at once to compound a draught which would restore him that evening to health and strength. I objected that all our drugs had been left behind at Panga-ni: by no means satisfied with the excuse, he signified that we might wander about the hills, and seek the plants required.

After half an hour’s conversation, Hamdan being our interpreter, we were dismissed with a renewal of welcome. On our return to the ‘Traveller’s Bungalow,’ the present was forwarded to the Sultan with the usual ceremony, and we found awaiting us a fine bullock, a basket full of Sima—young Indian corn pounded and boiled to a hard, thick paste—and balls of unripe bananas, peeled and mashed up with sour milk, thus converting the fruit to a vegetable. Our Baloch at once addressed themselves to the manufacturing of beef, and they devoured their steaks with such a will that unpleasant symptoms presently declared themselves in camp.

That day we had covered 10 miles, equal, perhaps, to 30 on a decent road in a temperate clime. The angry blast, the dashing rain, and the groaning trees, formed a concert which, heard from within a warm hut, affected us pleasurably: I would not have exchanged it for the music of Verdi. We slept sweetly, as only travellers can sleep.

CHAPTER VIII.
THE MARCH BACK. THE HIPPOPOTAMUS’ HUNT.
THE RETURN TO ZANZIBAR.

‘Wasteful, forth

Walks the dire Power of pestilent disease.

A thousand hideous fiends her course attend,

Sick nature blasting, and to heartless woe

And feeble desolation, casting down

The towering hopes and all the pride of man.’