Native life in East Africa

Six months ago it would not have entered my head in my wildest dreams that I should spend my favourite festival, Whitsuntide, under the shade of African palms. But it is the fact, nevertheless. I have now been two days in the capital of German East Africa, a spot which may well fascinate even older travellers than myself. Not that the scenery is strikingly grand or majestic—on the contrary, lofty mountain-masses and mighty rivers are conspicuous by their absence, and the wide expanse of the open ocean contributes nothing directly to the picture, for Dar es Salam lies inland and has no seaview worth mentioning. The charm of the landscape lies rather in one of the happiest combinations of flashing waters, bright foliage, and radiant sunshine that can be imagined.

The entrance to the harbour gives to the uninitiated no hint of the beauty to come. A narrow channel, choked with coral reefs, and, by its abrupt turns, making severe demands on the skill of the pilot, leads to the central point of a shallow bay which seems to have no outlet. Suddenly, however, the vessel glides past this central point into an extraordinarily narrow channel, with steep green banks on either side, which opens out, before the traveller has had time to recover from his astonishment, into a wide, glittering expanse, covered with ships. That is the famous bay of Dar es Salam. In presence of the obvious advantages of this locality, one need not have lived for years in the country to understand why the Germans should have been willing to give up the old caravan emporium of Bagamoyo with its open roadstead for this splendid harbour, and thus make the almost unknown native village of Dar es Salam the principal place in the colony.^[2]

On the voyage out, I visited with much enjoyment both Mombasa and Zanzibar, though unfortunately prevented by an accident (an injury to my foot) from going ashore at the German port of Tanga. Of these two English centres, Zanzibar represents the past, Mombasa the present, and still more the future. It is true that Zanzibar has the advantage in its situation on an island at a considerable distance from the mainland, an advantage of which the mainland towns, however splendid their future development, will never be able to deprive it, since their lines of communication, both economic and intellectual, will always converge on Zanzibar. But since the completion of the Uganda Railway, Mombasa forms the real gateway to the interior, and will do so in an increasing degree, as the economic development of Central Africa—now only in its infancy—goes on. Whether our two great German railways—as yet only projected—can ever recover the immense advantage gained by Mombasa, the future will show. We must hope for the best.

Mombasa and Zanzibar interested me more from a historical than from a political point of view. How little do our educated and even learned circles know of the exploration and development, the varied political fortunes of this corner of the earth on the western shore of the Indian Ocean! Only specialists, indeed, can be expected to know that this year is the jubilee of the French Admiral Guillain’s epoch-making work, Documents sur l’Histoire, la Géographie, et le Commerce de l’Afrique Orientale, but it is extremely distressing to find that our countryman, Justus Strandes’ Die Portugiesenzeit in Deutsch- und Englisch-Ostafrika (1899) is not better known. Most of us think that Eastern Equatorial Africa, considered as a field for colonization, is as much virgin soil as Togo, Kamerun and German South-West Africa, or the greater part of our possessions in the South Seas. How few of us realise that, before us and before the English, the Arabs had, a thousand years ago, shown the most brilliant capacity for gaining and keeping colonies, and that after them the Portuguese, in connection with and as a consequence of Vasco da Gama’s voyage to India round the Cape of Good Hope in 1498, occupied an extensive strip of the long coast, and maintained their hold on it for centuries? And yet these events—these struggles for East Africa form one of the most interesting chapters in the history of modern colonization. Here for the first time the young European culture-element meets with an Eastern opponent worthy of its steel. In fact that struggle for the north-western shores of the Indian Ocean stands for nothing less than the beginning of that far more serious struggle which the white race has waged for the supremacy over the earth in general, and in which they already seemed to be victorious, when, a few years ago, the unexpected rise of Japan showed the fallacious nature of the belief so long entertained, and perhaps also the opening of a new era.

Anyone who does not travel merely for the sake of present impressions, but is accustomed to see the past behind the phenomena of the moment, and, like myself, leaves the area of European culture with the express object of using his results to help in solving the great problem of man’s intellectual evolution in all its details, will find in the voyage to German East Africa a better opportunity for survey and retrospect than in many other great routes of modern travel.

This is the case as soon as one has crossed the Alps. It is true that even the very moderate speed of the Italian express gives one no chance for anthropological studies. In order to observe the unmistakable Teutonic strain in the population of Northern Italy, it would be necessary to traverse the plain of Lombardy at one’s leisure. But already in the Adige Valley, and still more as one advances through Northern and Central Italy, the stratification of successive races seems to me to be symbolized by the three strata of culture visible in the fields: corn below, fruit-trees planted between it, and vines covering them above. Just so the Lombards, Goths and other nations, superimposed themselves on the ancient Italian and Etruscan stocks. On the long journey from Modena to Naples, it is borne in upon one that the Apennines are really the determining feature of the whole Italian peninsula, and that the Romans were originally started on their career of conquest by want of space in their own country. The only place which, in May, 1906, produced an impression of spaciousness was the Bay of Naples, of which we never had a clear view during our four or five days’ stay. A faint haze, caused by the volcanic dust remaining in the air from the eruption of the previous month, veiled all the distances, while the streets and houses, covered with a layer of ashes, appeared grey on a grey background—a depressing and incongruous spectacle. The careless indolence of the Neapolitans, which as a rule strikes the industrious denizens of Central Europe as rather comical than offensive, requires the clear sky and bright sunshine, celebrated by all travellers (but of which we could see little or nothing), to set it off.

From our school-days we have been familiar with the fact that the countries bordering the Mediterranean—the seats of ancient civilisation—are now practically denuded of forests. Yet the landscape of Southern Italy and Sicily seems to the traveller still more unfamiliar than that of the northern and central districts; it is even more treeless, and therefore sharper in contour than the Etruscan and Roman Apennines and the Abruzzi. But the most striking feature to us inhabitants of the North-German plain are the river-valleys opening into the Strait of Messina, leading up by steep gradients into the interior of the country. At this season they seem either to be quite dry or to contain very little water, so that they are calculated to produce the impression of broad highways. But how terrible must be the force with which the mass of water collecting in the torrent-bed after heavy rains, with no forest-soil to keep it back, rushes down these channels to the sea! To the right and left of Reggio, opposite Messina, numbers of sinuous ravines slope down to the coast, all piled high with débris and crossed by bridges whose arches have the height and span of the loftiest railway viaducts.

It is scarcely necessary to say anything about Port Said and the Suez Canal. Entering the Red Sea, I entered at the same time a familiar region—I might almost say, one which I have made peculiarly my own—it having fallen to my share to write the monographs on the three oceans included in Helmolt’s Weltgeschichte.^[3] Of these monographs, that dealing with the Atlantic seems, in the opinion of the general reader, to be the most successful; but that on the Indian Ocean is undoubtedly more interesting from the point of view of human history. In the first place, this sea has this advantage over its eastern and western neighbours, that its action on the races and peoples adjacent to it was continued through a long period. The Pacific has historic peoples (historic, that is to say, in the somewhat restricted and one-sided sense in which we have hitherto used that term) on its north-western margin, in eastern Asia; but the rest of its huge circumference has remained dead and empty, historically speaking, almost up to the present day. The Atlantic exactly reverses these conditions: its historical density is limited to the north-eastern region, the west coast of Africa, and the east coast of the Americas being (with the exception of the United States) of the utmost insignificance from a historical point of view.

Now the Indian Ocean formed the connecting link between these two centres—the Mediterranean culture-circle in the west, and that of India and Eastern Asia in the east,—at a time when both Atlantic and Pacific were still empty and untraversed wastes of water. This, however, is true, not of the whole Indian Ocean, but only as regards its northern part, and in particular the two indentations running far inland in a north-westerly direction, which we call the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf. To-day, when we carry our railways across whole continents, and even mountain ranges present no insuperable obstacles to our canals, we imagine that masses of land as wide as the Isthmus of Suez or the much greater extent of the “Syrian Porte”—the route between the Persian Gulf and the Eastern Mediterranean—must have been absolute deterrents to the sea-traffic of the ancients. In a sense, indeed, this was the case; otherwise so many ancient rulers would not have attempted to anticipate us in the construction of the Suez Canal. But where technical skill is insufficient to overcome such impediments, and where at the same time the demand for the treasures of the East is so enormous as it was in classical and mediæval times, people adapt themselves to existing conditions and make use of navigable water wherever it is to be found. Only thus can be explained the uninterrupted navigation of the Red Sea during a period of several thousand years, in spite of its dangerous reefs and the prevailing winds, which are anything but favourable to sailing vessels.

Only one period of repose—one might almost say, of enchanted sleep—has fallen to the lot of the Red Sea. This was the time when Islam, just awakened to the consciousness of its power, succeeded in laying its heavy hand on the transition zone between West and East. With the cutting of the Suez Canal, the last shadow of this ancient barrier has disappeared, and the Red Sea and North Indian Ocean have regained at a stroke, in fullest measure, their old place in the common life of mankind.

The passengers on board our steamer, the Prinzregent, were chiefly German and English; and at first a certain constraint was perceptible between the members of the two nationalities, the latter of whom seemed to be influenced by the dread and distrust expressed in numerous publications of the last few years. Mr. William Le Queux’s Invasion of 1910 was the book most in demand in the ship’s library.

A more sociable state of things gradually came about during the latter part of the voyage; and this largely through the agency of an unpretending instrument forming part of my anthropological equipment. One day, when we were nearing the Straits of Bab el Mandeb, partly in order to relieve the tedium of the voyage, and partly in order to obtain statistics of comparative strength, I produced my Collin’s dynamometer. This is an oval piece of polished steel, small enough to be held flat in the hand and compressed in a greater or less degree, according to the amount of force expended, the pressure being registered by means of cogged wheels acting on an index which in its turn moves a second index on a dial-plate. On relaxing the pressure, the first index springs back to its original position, while the second remains in the position it has taken up and shows the weight in kilogrammes equivalent to the pressure. The apparatus, really a medical one, is well adapted for ascertaining the comparative strength of different races; but its more immediate usefulness appears to lie in establishing cordial relations between total strangers in the shortest possible time. On that particular hot morning, I had scarcely begun testing my own strength, when all the English male passengers gathered round me, scenting some form of sport, which never fails to attract them, young or old. In the subsequent peaceful rivalry between the two nations, I may remark that our compatriots by no means came off worst; which may serve to show that our German system of physical training is not so much to be despised as has been recently suggested by many competent to judge, and by still more who are not so competent.

In his general attitude on board ship, the present-day German does not, so far as my observations go, contrast in the least unfavourably with the more experienced voyagers of other nationalities. It is true that almost every Englishman shows in his behaviour some trace of the national assumption that the supremacy of the seas belongs to him by right of birth. Our existence, however, is beginning to be recognized—not out of any strong affection for “our German cousins,” but as a simple matter of necessity. If, for comfort in travel, one must have recourse to German ships; and when, at home and abroad, there is a German merchant-fleet and a German navy to be reckoned with, the first of which keeps up an assiduous competition, while the second is slowly but steadily increasing, these things cannot fail to impress even the less cultured members of the British nation. Only one thing is, and will be for many years to come, calculated to make us ridiculous in the eyes of Old England—and that is the Zanzibar Treaty. Never shall I forget the looks of malicious triumph and the sarcastic condolences which greeted us—the unfortunate contemporaries of the late Caprivi—when we came in sight of Zanzibar. My friend Hiram Rhodes, of Liverpool, the ever-smiling and universally popular, usually known as “the laughing philosopher,” from his cheerful view of life, was not as a rule given to sharp sayings, but with regard to the famous political transaction, I distinctly remember to have heard him use the expression, “Children in politics.” Caustic, but not undeserved! Another remark of his, after viewing Dar es Salam: “That is the finest colony I have ever seen!” served, it is true, as a touch of healing balm—but no amount of conciliatory speeches will give us back Zanzibar!

The object of the journey on which I have embarked may now be briefly stated. Several decades since, and therefore before the beginning of our colonial era, the Reichstag voted an annual grant of some 200,000 marks for purposes of scientific research in Africa—purely in the interests of knowledge and without any ulterior intentions from a narrowly nationalist point of view. One might have expected that, after the establishment of our settlements in Africa and the Pacific, this fund would unhesitatingly have been devoted, wholly or in part, to the systematic exploration and study of these colonies of ours. But this has not been done, or only in a very uncertain and desultory manner—to the great grief of German scientific circles, who, under these circumstances, were forced to content themselves with the occasional reports of civil and military officials supplemented by sporadic research expeditions, official or private.

It was not till the first Colonial Congress in 1902 that a more vigorous agitation took place for the application of the African Fund on a large scale to the systematic investigation of our dependencies. From specialists in all branches of knowledge—geography and geology, anthropology and ethnography, zoology and botany, linguistics, comparative law, and the new science of comparative music—arose the same cry, with the result that, three years later, at the second Colonial Congress (October, 1905), we were in a position to state clearly the most pressing problems and mark out the principal fields of research in each subject. It might, however, have taken years to put the work in hand, but for the “Committee for the Geographical Exploration of the German Colonies,” and its energetic president, Dr. Hans Meyer, who rescued the proceedings from their normal condition of endless discussions, and translated them at one stroke into action. Dr. Jäger, Herr Eduard Oehler, and myself are the living proofs of this (in our country) unwonted rapidity of decision, being selected to carry out the instructions of the Committee (which is affiliated to the Colonial Office) and help to realise the long-cherished dream of German science.

The task of the two gentlemen I have mentioned is purely geographical, consisting in the examination of the interesting volcanic area situated between Kilimanjaro and the Victoria Nyanza, while I am commissioned to bring some order into the chaos of our knowledge concerning the tribes who occupy approximately the same region. It must be remembered that the country surrounding Lakes Manyara and Eyasi, and extending to a considerable distance south of them, swarms with tribes and peoples who, in spite of the fact that our acquaintance with them dates more than twenty years back, still present a variety of ethnological problems. Among these tribes are the Wasandawi, whose language is known to contain clicks like those of the Hottentots and Bushmen, and who are conjectured to be the forgotten remnant of a primæval race going back to prehistoric ages. The Wanege and Wakindiga, nomadic tribes in the vicinity of Lake Eyasi, are said to be akin to them. In the whole mass of African literature, a considerable part of which I have examined during my twenty years’ study of this continent, the most amusing thing I ever came across is the fact that our whole knowledge up to date of these Wakindiga actually results from the accident that Captain Werther had a field-glass in his hand at a given moment. This brilliant traveller, who traversed the district in question twice (in 1893 and 1896), heard of the existence of these people, but all that he saw of them was a distant telescopic view of a few huts. As yet we know no more of them than their bare name, conscientiously entered in every colonial or ethnological publication that makes its appearance.

Another group of as yet insufficiently-defined tribes is represented by the Wafiomi, Wairaku, Wawasi, Wamburu and Waburunge. All these are suspected of being Hamites, and some of them have evolved remarkable culture-conditions of their own. But, under the onrush of new developments, they are in danger of losing their distinctive character still more rapidly than other African peoples, and, if only for this reason, systematic observations are needed before it is too late. The same may be said of the Wataturu or Tatoga, who are undoubtedly to be looked on as the remnant of a formerly numerous population. They are said to speak a language related to Somali, but now live scattered over so wide a territory that the danger of their being effaced by absorption in other races is, if possible, still greater than in the case of the others. The last of the tribes which specially concern me are the Wanyaturu, Wairangi and Wambugwe. All of these belong to the great Bantu group, but have, in consequence of their isolation, preserved certain peculiarities of culture so faithfully that they too will be well worth a visit.

With regard to the original home of the African race, this is a question to which ethnologists have not hitherto devoted very much attention. The Hamites, who occupy the north-eastern corner of the continent, are supposed by all writers without exception to have come from Asia across the Red Sea. Most authorities have been content with comparatively short periods in estimating the date of this migration—indeed, the most recent work on the subject, Captain Merker’s book on the Masai (whom, by the bye, he claims as Semites) asserts that both date and route can be accurately calculated, and places the former about 5,000 years ago.

Not only for these, moreover, but also for the great mass of the population of Africa, the Sudanese and Bantu negroes, an original home outside the continent is very generally assumed; and both these groups are supposed to have penetrated to their present abodes from Asia, either by way of the Isthmus of Suez, or across the Straits of Bab el Mandeb.

This theory I had the pleasure of combating some years ago. There is absolutely nothing to show that the ancestors of the present negro race ever lived elsewhere than in the region which, in the main, they occupy to-day. No branch of this large group can be shown to have possessed any nautical skill worth mentioning; and none has ever ventured far out to sea.

It may be said that no great knowledge of navigation was needed for crossing the Strait of Bab el Mandeb, even if the migration did not take place by way of the Isthmus. The problem, however, is by no means to be solved in this simple fashion. Modern anthropology demands for human evolution periods as long as for that of the higher animals. Diluvial Man has long since been recognized by our most rigid orthodoxy; and people would have to get used to Tertiary Man, even if the necessities of the case did not make him an indispensable postulate. As the youth of mankind recedes into early geological periods, the problem of race-development is seen to require for its solution not merely measurements of skull and skeleton, but the vigorous cooperation of palæontology and historical geology. So far as I can judge, the sciences in question will probably end by agreeing on three primitive races, the white, black and yellow, each having its centre of development on one of the old primitive continents. Such a continent in fact existed through long geological ages in the Southern Hemisphere. A large fragment of it is represented by modern Africa, smaller ones by Australia and the archipelagoes of Indonesia and Papua. The distribution of the black race from Senegambia in the west to Fiji in the east is thus explained in a way that seems ridiculously easy.

To account for the great groups of mixed races, too, we must for the future, in my opinion, have recourse to the geological changes of the earth’s surface. Whence do we derive the Hamites? and what, after all, do we understand by this term, which, curiously enough, denotes a zone of peoples exactly filling up the geographical gap between the white and black races? Furthermore, how are we to explain the so-called Ural-Altaic race, that mass of peoples so difficult to define, occupying the space between the primitive Mongol element in the East and the Caucasian in the West? Does not, here too, the thought suggest itself that the impulse to the development of both groups—the North African as well as the North Asiatic—came from a long-continued contact between the ancient primitive races which, according to the position of affairs, i.e., judging by the geological changes which have taken place, both in the south-eastern corner of the Mediterranean, and in the east of Northern Europe—was only rendered possible by the junction of the old continents formerly separated by seas? In fact the land connection in both these places is, geologically speaking, very recent.

To come back from dreary theory to cheerful reality, I may mention that I have taken a few successful photographs of Cape Guardafui. From the north this promontory does not look very imposing. The coast seems quite near, but in reality we are five or six miles away from it, and at this distance the cliffs, though nearly a thousand feet high, are reduced to insignificance.

The view from the south is more impressive. Here, on our right, the mountains rise in an almost vertical wall to a height of some 3,000 feet, and often look still higher, when their summits are lost in a compact stratum of cloud. Yet the eye always turns back again and again to the Cape itself. It does not indeed appear more lofty than it did from the north, but from this side it presents, even to the least imaginative observer, the shape known to all travellers as the “Sleeping Lion.” I am not in general particularly impressed by the fancied resemblances which as a rule give rise to the bestowal of similar appellations, but here I was struck by the absolute verisimilitude of this piece of natural sculpture. The mighty maned head lies low, seemingly resting on the dark blue line of the Indian Ocean, the right fore-paw drawn up close to it. But the royal beast’s eyes are closed, and what a splendid piece of symbolism is thus lost to us! As it is, the image presented to-day is a somewhat tame one. In old times, while the lion was awake, he watched over the busy maritime traffic which the later period of antiquity and the early Middle Ages kept up before his eyes, when Phœnicians, Himyarites, Greeks, Romans, Arabs, and Persians sailed eastward and southward, and the mediæval Chinese advanced from the east as far as the Gulf of Aden, and even into the Red Sea. That was a time when it was worth while to keep awake. Then came Islam and the rule of the Turk—and, still later, the circumnavigation of the Cape rendered the Egyptian and Syrian overland routes useless. The Red Sea and the Persian Gulf sank into a stagnation that lasted for centuries—and the Lion grew weary and fell asleep.

Even the enormous traffic brought by the opening of the Suez Canal has not been sufficient to wake him; the world is ruled by vis inertiæ, and a scant forty years is all too short a time for the sounds of life to have penetrated his slumbers. For that, other means will be required.

There is an Italian captain on board, a splendid figure of a man, but suffering sadly from the effects of spear-wounds received from the Abyssinians at Adowa. I asked him the other day why his Government had not placed a lighthouse on Cape Guardafui, which, as rulers of the country they were surely bound to do. He acknowledged that this was so, but pointed out that the attempt to carry out any such project would involve a difficult and expensive campaign against the Somali, who would by no means tamely submit to lose the profits of their trade as wreckers.

No doubt the captain was right, but Italy cannot in the long run refuse to comply with the international obligation of erecting a lighthouse on this exposed spot, where even now may be seen the melancholy black hull of a French steamer, which, coming up the coast on a dark night, took the westerly turn too soon. But from the moment when this lighthouse throws its rays for the first time over the waves of the Indian Ocean, the Lion will awake, and feel that his time has come once more.

The monsoon is a welcome change, after the enervating atmosphere of the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden, but for any length of time its monotony becomes tedious. Hence the loud rejoicing of passengers on sighting Mombasa and Zanzibar and the speed with which they rush on shore at those ports. At Dar es Salam the first freshness has worn off a little, but the traveller nevertheless sets foot on dry land with an indefinable feeling of relief.