The fourth division is a hilly table-land, extending from the western skirts of the desert Mgunda Mk’hali, in E. long. 33° 57′, to the eastern banks of the Malagarazi River, in E. long. 31° 10′: it thus stretches diagonally over 155 rectilinear geographical miles. Bounded on the north by Usui and the Nyanza Lake, to the south-eastwards by Ugala, southwards by Ukimbu, and south-westwards by Uwende, it has a depth of from twenty-five to thirty marches. Native caravans, if lightly laden, can accomplish it in twenty-five days, including four halts. The maximum altitude observed by B. P. therm. was 4050 feet, the minimum 2850. This region contains the two great divisions of Unyamwezi and Uvinza.
The name of Unyamwezi was first heard by the Portuguese, according to Giovanni Botero, towards the end of the sixteenth century, or about 1589. Pigafetta, who, in 1591, systematised the discoveries of the earlier Portuguese, placed the empire of “Monemugi” or Munimigi in a vast triangular area, whose limits were Monomotapa, Congo, and Abyssinia: from his pages it appears that the people of this central kingdom were closely connected by commerce with the towns on the eastern coast of Africa. According to Dapper, the Dutch historian, (1671,) whose work has been the great mine of information to subsequent writers upon Africa south of the equator, about sixty days’ journey from the Atlantic is the kingdom of Monemugi, which others call “Nimeamaye,” a name still retained under the corrupted form “Nimeaye” in our atlases. M. Malte-Brun, senior, mentioning Mounemugi, adds, “ou, selon une autographe plus authentique, Mou-nimougi.” All the Portuguese authors call the people Monemugi or Mono-emugi; Mr. Cooley prefers Monomoezi, which he derives from “Munha Munge,” or “lord of the world,” the title of a great African king in the interior, commemorated by the historian De Barros. Mr. Macqueen (‘Geography of Central Africa’), who also gives Manmoise, declares that “Mueno-muge, Mueno-muize, Monomoise, and Uniamese,” relate to the same place and people, comprehending a large extent of country in the interior of Africa: he explains the word erroneously to mean the “great Moises or Movisas.” The Rev. Mr. Erhardt asserts that for facility of pronunciation the coast merchants have turned the name “Wanamesi” into “Waniamesi,” which also leads his readers into error. The Rev. Mr. Livingstone thus endorses the mistake of Messrs. Macqueen and Erhardt: “The names Monomoizes, spelt also Monemuigis and Monomuizes, and Monomotapistas, when applied to the tribes, are exactly the same as if we should call the Scotch the Lord Douglases.... Monomoizes was formed from Moiza or Muiza, the singular of the word Babisa or Aiza, the proper name of a large tribe to the north.” In these sentences there is a confusion between the lands of the Wanyamwezi, lying under the parallel of the Tanganyika Lake, and the Wabisa (in the singular Mbísá, the Wavisa of the Rev. Mr. Rebmann), a well-known commercial tribe dwelling about the Maravi or Nyassa Lake, S.W. of Kilwa, whose name in times of old was corrupted by the Portuguese to Movizas or Movisas. Finally M. Guillain, in a work already alluded to, states correctly the name of the people to be Oua-nyamouczi, but in designating the country “pays de Nyamouezi,” he shows little knowledge of the Zangian dialects. M. V. A. Malte-Brun, junior (‘Bulletin de Géographie,’ Paris, 1856, Part II. p. 295) correctly writes Wanyamwezi.
A name so discrepantly corrupted deserves some notice. Unyamwezi is translated by Dr. Krapf and the Rev. Mr. Rebmann, “Possessions of the Moon.” The initial U, the causal and locative prefix, denotes the land, nya, of, and mwezi, articulated m’ezí with semi-elision of the w, means the moon. The people sometimes pronounce their country name Unyamiezi, which would be a plural form, miezi signifying moons or months. The Arabs and the people of Zanzibar, for facility and rapidity of pronunciation, dispense with the initial dissyllable, and call the country and its race Mwezi. The correct designation of the inhabitants of Unyamwezi is, therefore, Mnyamwezi in the singular, and Wanyamwezi in the plural: Kinyamwezi is the adjectival form. It is not a little curious that the Greeks should have placed their της σεληνης ορος—the mountain of the moon—and the Hindus their Soma Giri (an expression probably translated from the former), in the vicinity of the African “Land of the Moon.” It is impossible to investigate the antiquity of the vernacular term; all that can be discovered is, that nearly 350 years ago the Portuguese explorers of Western Africa heard the country designated by its present name.
There is the evidence of barbarous tradition for a belief in the existence of Unyamwezi as a great empire, united under a single despot. The elders declare that their patriarchal ancestor became after death the first tree, and afforded shade to his children and descendants. According to the Arabs the people still perform pilgrimage to a holy tree, and believe that the penalty of sacrilege in cutting off a twig would be visited by sudden and mysterious death. All agree in relating that during the olden time Unyamwezi was united under a single sovereign, whose tribe was the Wakalaganza, still inhabiting the western district, Usagozi. According to the people, whose greatest chronical measure is a Masika, or rainy season, in the days of the grandfathers of their grandfathers the last of the Wanyamwezi emperors died. His children and nobles divided and dismembered his dominions, further partitions ensued, and finally the old empire fell into the hands of a rabble of petty chiefs. Their wild computation would point to an epoch of 150 years ago—a date by no means improbable.
These glimmerings of light thrown by African tradition illustrate the accounts given by the early Portuguese concerning the extent and the civilisation of the Unyamwezi empire. Moreover, African travellers in the seventeenth century concur in asserting that, between 250 and 300 years ago, there was an outpouring of the barbarians from the heart of Æthiopia and from the shores of the Central Lake towards the eastern and southern coasts of the peninsula, a general waving and wandering of tribes which caused great ethnological and geographical confusion, public demoralisation, dismemberment of races, and change, confusion, and corruption of tongues. About this period it is supposed the kingdom of Mtándá, the first Kazembe, was established. The Kafirs of the Cape also date their migration from the northern regions to the banks of the Kei about a century and a half ago.
In these days Unyamwezi has returned to the political status of Eastern Africa in the time of the Periplus. It is broken up into petty divisions, each ruled by its own tyrant; his authority never extends beyond five marches; moreover, the minor chiefs of the different districts are virtually independent of their suzerains. One language is spoken throughout the land of the Moon, but the dialectic differences are such that the tribes in the east with difficulty understand their brethren in the west. The principal provinces are—Utakama to the extreme north, Usukuma on the south,—in Kinyamwezi sukuma means the north, takama the south, kiya the east, and mwere the west,—Unyanyembe in the centre, Ufyoma and Utumbara in the north-west, Unyangwira in the south-east, Usagozi and Usumbwá to the westward. The three normal divisions of the people are into Wanyamwezi, Wasukuma or northern, and Watakama or southern.
The general character of Unyamwezi is rolling ground, intersected with low conical and tabular hills, whose lines ramify in all directions. No mountain is found in the country. The superjacent stratum is clay, overlying the sandstone based upon various granites, which in some places crop out, picturesquely disposed in blocks and boulders and huge domes and lumpy masses; ironstone is met with at a depth varying from five to twelve feet, and at Kazeh, the Arab settlement in Unyanyembe, bits of coarse ore were found by digging not more than four feet in a chance spot. During the rains a coat of many-tinted greens conceals the soil; in the dry season the land is grey, lighted up by golden stubbles and dotted with wind-distorted trees, shallow swamps of emerald grass, and wide sheets of dark mud. Dwarfed stumps and charred “black-jacks” deform the fields, which are sometimes ditched or hedged in, whilst a thin forest of parachute-shaped thorns diversifies the waves of rolling land and earth-hills spotted with sun-burnt stone. The reclaimed tracts and clearings are divided from one another by strips of primæval jungle, varying from two to twelve miles in length. As in most parts of Eastern Africa, the country is dotted with “fairy mounts”—dwarf mounds, the ancient sites of trees now crumbled to dust, and the débris of insect architecture; they appear to be rich ground, as they are always diligently cultivated. The yield of the soil, according to the Arabs, averages sixty-fold, even in unfavourable seasons.
The Land of the Moon, which is the garden of Central Intertropical Africa, presents an aspect of peaceful rural beauty which soothes the eye like a medicine after the red glare of barren Ugogo, and the dark monotonous verdure of the western provinces. The inhabitants are comparatively numerous in the villages, which rise at short intervals above their impervious walls of the lustrous green milk-bush, with its coral-shaped arms, variegating the well-hoed plains; whilst in the pasture-lands frequent herds of many-coloured cattle, plump, round-barrelled, and high-humped, like the Indian breeds, and mingled flocks of goats and sheep dispersed over the landscape, suggest ideas of barbarous comfort and plenty. There are few scenes more soft and soothing than a view of Unyamwezi in the balmy evenings of spring. As the large yellow sun nears the horizon, a deep stillness falls upon earth: even the zephyr seems to lose the power of rustling the lightest leaf. The milky haze of midday disappears from the firmament, the flush of departing day mantles the distant features of scenery with a lovely rose-tint, and the twilight is an orange glow that burns like distant horizontal fires, passing upwards through an imperceptibly graduated scale of colours—saffron, yellow, tender green, and the lightest azure—into the dark blue of the infinite space above. The charm of the hour seems to affect even the unimaginative Africans, as they sit in the central spaces of their villages, or, stretched under the forest-trees, gaze upon the glories around.
In Unyamwezi water generally lies upon the surface, during the rains, in broad shallow pools, which become favourite sites for rice-fields. These little ziwa and mbuga—ponds and marshes—vary from two to five feet below the level of the land; in the dry season they are betrayed from afar by a green line of livelier vegetation streaking the dead tawny plain. The Arabs seldom dig their wells deeper than six feet, and they complain of the want of “live-water” gushing from the rocky ground, as in their native Oman. The country contains few springs, and the surface of retentive clay prevents the moisture penetrating to the subsoil. The peculiarity of the produce is its decided chalybeate flavour. The versant of the country varies. The eastern third, falling to the south-east, discharges its surplus supplies through the Rwaha river into the Indian Ocean; in the centre, water seems to stagnate; and in the western third, the flow, turning to the north and north-west, is carried by the Gombe nullah—a string of pools during the dry season, and a rapid unfordable stream during the rains—into the great Malagarazi river, the principal eastern influent of the Tanganyika Lake. The levels of the country and the direction of the waters combine to prove that the great depression of Central Africa, alluded to in the preceding chapter, commences in the district of Kigwa in Unyamwezi.
The climate of the island and coast of Zanzibar has, it must be remembered, double seasons, which are exceedingly confused and irregular. The lands of Unyamwezi and Uvinza, on the other hand, are as remarkable for simplicity of division. There eight seasons disturb the idea of year; here but two—a summer and a winter. Central Africa has, as the Spaniards say of the Philippine Isles,
In 1857 the Masika, or rains, commenced throughout Eastern Unyamwezi on the 14th of November. In the northern and western provinces the wet monsoon begins earlier and lasts longer. At Msene it precedes Unyanyembe about a month; in Ujiji, Karagwah, and Uganda, nearly two months. Thus the latter countries have a rainy season which lasts from the middle of September till the middle of May.
The moisture-bearing wind in this part of Africa is the fixed south-east trade, deflected, as in the great valley of the Mississippi and in the island of Ceylon, into a periodical south-west monsoon. As will appear in these pages, the downfalls begin earlier in Central Africa than upon the eastern coast, and from the latter point they travel by slow degrees, with the northing sun, to the north-east, till they find a grave upon the rocky slopes of the Himalayas.
The rainy monsoon is here ushered in, accompanied, and terminated by storms of thunder and lightning, and occasional hail-falls. The blinding flashes of white, yellow, or rose colour play over the firmament uninterruptedly for hours, during which no darkness is visible. In the lighter storms thirty and thirty-five flashes may be counted in a minute: so vivid is the glare that it discloses the finest shades of colour, and appears followed by a thick and palpable gloom, such as would hang before a blind man’s eyes, whilst a deafening roar simultaneously following the flash, seems to travel, as it were, to and fro overhead. Several claps sometimes sound almost at the same moment, and as if coming from different directions. The same storm will, after the most violent of its discharges, pass over, and be immediately followed by a second, showing the superabundance of electricity in the atmosphere. When hail is about to fall, a rushing noise is heard in the air, with sudden coolness and a strange darkness from the canopy of brownish purple clouds. The winds are exceedingly variable: perhaps they are most often from the east and north-east during summer, from the north-west and south-west in the rains; but they are answered from all quarters of the heavens, and the most violent storms sail up against the lower atmospheric currents. The Portuguese of the Mozambique attribute these terrible discharges of electricity to the quantity of mineral substances scattered about the country; but a steaming land like Eastern Africa wants, during the rains, no stronger battery. In the rainy season the sensation is that experienced during the equinoctial gales in the Mediterranean, where the scirocco diffuses everywhere discomfort and disease. The fall is not, as in Western India, a steady downpour, lasting sometimes two or three days without a break. In Central Africa, rain seldom endures beyond twelve hours, and it often assumes for weeks an appearance of regularity, re-occurring at a certain time. Night is its normal season; the mornings are often wet, and the torrid midday is generally dry. As in Southern Africa, a considerable decrease of temperature is the consequence of long-continued rain. Westward of Unyanyembe, hail-storms, during the rainy monsoon, are frequent and violent; according to the Arabs, the stones sometimes rival pigeons’ eggs in size. Throughout this monsoon the sun burns with sickly depressing rays, which make earth reek like a garment hung out to dry. Yet this is not considered the unhealthy period: the inundation is too deep, and evaporation is yet unable to extract sufficient poison from decay.
As in India and the southern regions of Africa, the deadly season follows the wet monsoon from the middle of May to the end of June. The kosi or south-west wind gives place to the kaskazi, or north-east, about April, a little later than at Zanzibar. The cold gales and the fervid suns then affect the outspread waters; the rivers, having swollen during the weeks of violent downfall that usher in the end of the rains, begin to shrink, and miry morasses and swamps of black vegetable mud line the low-lands whose central depths are still under water. The winds, cooled by excessive evaporation and set in motion by the heat, howl over the country by night and day, dispersing through the population colds and catarrhs, agues and rheumatisms, dysenteries and deadly fevers. It must, however, be remarked that many cases which in India and Sindh would be despaired of, survived in Eastern Africa.
The hot season, or summer, lasting from the end of June till nearly the middle of November, forms the complement of the year. The air now becomes healthy and temperate; the cold, raw winds rarely blow, and the people recover from their transition diseases. At long intervals, during these months, but a few grateful and refreshing showers, accompanied by low thunderings, cool the air and give life to the earth. These phenomena are expected after the change of the moon, and not, as in Zanzibar, during her last quarter. The Arabs declare that here, as in the island, rain sometimes falls from a clear sky—a phenomenon not unknown to African travellers. The drought affects the country severely, a curious exception to the rule in the zone of perpetual rain; and after August whirlwinds of dust become frequent. At this time the climate is most agreeable to the senses; even in the hottest nights a blanket is welcome, especially about dawn, and it is possible to dine at 3 or 4 P.M., when in India the exertion would be impracticable. During the day a ring-cloud, or a screen of vapour, almost invariably tempers the solar rays; at night a halo, or a corona, generally encircles the moon. The clouds are chiefly cumulus, cumulo-stratus, and nimbus; the sky is often overcast with large white masses floating, apparently without motion, upon the milky haze, and in the serenest weather a few threads are seen pencilled upon the expanse above. Sunrise is seldom thoroughly clear, and, when so, the clouds, sublimed in other regions and brought up by the rising winds, begin to gather in the forenoon. They are melted, as it were, by the fervent heat of the sun between noon and 3 P.M., at which time also the breezes fall light. Thick mists collect about sunset, and by night the skies are seldom free from clouds. The want of heat to dilate the atmosphere at this season, and the light-absorbing vegetation which clothes the land, causes a peculiar dimness in the Galaxy and “Magellan’s Clouds.” The twilight also is short, and the zodiacal light is not observed. The suffocating sensation of the tropics is unknown, and at noon in the month of September—the midsummer of this region—the thermometer, defended from the wind, in a single-fold Arab tent, never exceeded 113° Fahr. Except during the rains, the dews are not heavy, as in Zanzibar, in the alluvial valleys, and in Usagara and Ujiji: the people do not fear exposure to them, though, as in parts of France, they consider dew-wetted grass unwholesome for cattle. The Arabs stand bathing in the occasional torrents of rain without the least apprehension. The temperature varies too little for the European constitution, which requires a winter. The people, however, scarcely care to clothe themselves. The flies and mosquitoes—those pests of most African countries—are here a minor annoyance.
The principal cause of disease during the summer of Unyamwezi is the east wind, which, refrigerated by the damp alluvial valleys of the first region and the tree-clad peaks and swampy plains of Usagara, sweeps the country, like the tramontanas of Italy, with a freezing cold in the midst of an atmosphere properly tepid. These unnatural combinations of extremes, causing sudden chills when the skin perspires, bring on inevitable disease; strangers often suffer severely, and the influenza is as much feared in Unyamwezi as in England. The east wind is even more dangerous in the hut than in the field: draughts from the four quarters play upon the patient, making one side of the body tremble with cold, whilst the other, defended by the wall or heated by the fire, burns with fever-glow. The gales are most violent immediately after the cessation of the rains; about the beginning of August they become warmer and fall light. At this time frequent whirlwinds sweep from the sun-parched land clouds of a fine and penetrating clay-dust; and slight shocks of earthquakes are by no means uncommon. Three were observed by the Expedition—at noon on the 14th of June, 1858; on the morning of the 13th of June; and at 5 P.M. on the 22nd of November, 1858. The motion, though mild, was distinctly perceptible; unfortunately, means of ascertaining the direction were wanted. The people of the country call this phenomenon “Tetemeka,” or the trembling; and the Arabs remember a shock of a serious nature which took place at Unyanyembe in the hot season of 1852. After September, though the land is parched with drought, the trees begin to put forth their leaves; it is the coupling season of beasts, and the period of nidification and incubation for birds. The gradual lowering of the temperature, caused by the southern declination of the sun, acts like the genial warmth of an English spring. As all sudden changes from siccity to humidity are prejudicial to man, there is invariably severe disease at the end of the summer, when the rains set in.
Travellers from Unyamwezi homeward returned often represent that country to be the healthiest in Eastern and Central Africa: they quote, as a proof, the keenness of their appetites and the quantity of food which they consume. The older residents, however, modify their opinions: they declare that digestion does not wait upon appetite; and that, as in Egypt, Mazanderan, Malabar, and other hot-damp countries, no man long retains rude health. The sequelæ of their maladies are always severe; few care to use remedies, deeming them inefficacious against morbific influences to them unknown; convalescence is protracted, painful, and uncertain, and at length they are compelled to lead the lives of confirmed invalids. The gifts of the climate, lassitude and indolence, according to them, predispose to corpulence; and the regular warmth induces baldness, and thins the beard, thus assimilating strangers in body as in mind to the aborigines. They are unanimous in quoting a curious effect of climate, which they attribute to a corruption of the “humours and juices of the body.” Men who, after a lengthened sojourn in these regions return to Oman, throw away the surplus provisions brought from the African coast, burn their clothes and bedding, and for the first two or three months eschew society; a peculiar effluvium rendering them, it is said, offensive to the finer olfactories of their compatriots.
The Mukunguru of Unyamwezi is perhaps the severest seasoning fever in this part of Africa. It is a bilious remittent, which normally lasts three days; it wonderfully reduces the patient in that short period, and in severe cases the quotidian is followed by a long attack of a tertian type. The consequences are severe and lasting even in men of the strongest nervous diathesis; burning and painful eyes, hot palms and soles, a recurrence of shivering and flushing fits, with the extremities now icy cold, then painfully hot and swollen, indigestion, insomnolency, cutaneous eruptions and fever sores, languor, dejection, and all the inconveniences resulting from torpidity of liver, or from an inordinate secretion of bile, betray the poison deep-lurking in the system. In some cases this fever works speedily; some even, becoming at once delirious, die on the first or the second day, and there is invariably an exacerbation of symptoms before the bilious remittent passes away.
The fauna of Unyamwezi are similar to those described in Usagara and Ugogo. In the jungles quadrumana are numerous; lions and leopards, cynhyænas and wild cats haunt the forests; the elephant and the rhinoceros, the giraffe and the Cape buffalo, the zebra, the quagga (?), and the koodoo wander over the plains; and the hippopotamus and crocodile are found in every large pool. The nyanyi or cynocephalus in the jungles of Usukuma attains the size of a greyhound; according to the people, there are three varieties of colour—red, black, and yellow. They are the terror of the neighbouring districts: women never dare to approach their haunts; they set the leopard at defiance, and, when in a large body, they do not, it is said, fear the lion. The Colobus guereza, or tippet monkey, the “polume” of Dr. Livingstone (ch. xvi.), here called mbega, is admired on account of its polished black skin and snowy-white mane. It is a cleanly animal, ever occupied in polishing its beautiful garb, which, according to the Arabs, it tears to pieces when wounded, lest the hunter should profit by it. The mbega lives in trees, seldom descending, and feeds upon the fruit and the young leaves. The Arabs speak of wild dogs in the vicinity of Unyanyembe, describing them as being about eighteen inches in height, with rufous-black and shaggy coats, and long thick tails; they are gregarious, running in packs of from 20 to 200; they attack indiscriminately man and the largest animals, and their only cry is a howl. About the time of our autumn the pools are visited by various kinds of aquatic birds, widgeon, plump little teal, fine snipe, curlew, and crane; the ardea, or white “paddy-bird” of India, and the “lily-trotter” (Parra Africana), are scattered over the country; and sometimes, though rarely, the chenalopex or common Egyptian-goose and the gorgeous-crowned crane (Balearica pavonina), the latter a favourite dish with the Arabs, appear. In several parts of Unyamwezi, especially in the north, there is a large and well-flavoured species of black-backed goose (Sakidornis melanota): the common wild duck of England was not seen. Several specimens of the Buceros, the secretary-bird (Serpentarius reptilivorus), and large vultures, probably the condor of the Cape, were observed in Unyamwezi; the people do not molest them, holding the flesh to be carrion. The Cuculus indicator, called in Kisawahili “tongoe,” is common; but, its honey being mostly hived, it does not attract attention. Grillivori, and a species of thrush, about the size of common larks, with sulphur-yellow patches under the eyes, and two naked black striæ beneath the throat, are here migratory birds; they do good service to the agriculturist against the locust. A variety of the Loxia or grossbill constructs nests sometimes in bunches hanging from the lower branches of the trees. The mtiko, a kind of water-wagtail (Motacilla), ventures into the huts with the audacity of a London sparrow, and the Africans have a prejudice against killing it. Swallows and martins of various kinds, some peculiarly graceful and slender, may be seen migrating at the approach of winter in regular travelling order: of these, one variety resembles the English bird. The Africans declare that a single species of hirundo, probably the sand-martin, builds in the precipitous earth-banks of the nullahs: their nests were not seen, however, as in Southern Africa, under the eaves of houses. There are a few ostriches, hawks, ravens, plovers, nightjars (Caprimulgidæ), red and blue jays of brilliant plume, muscicapæ, blackcaps or mock nightingales (Motacilla atrocapilla?), passerines of various kinds, hoopoes, bulbuls, wrens, larks, and bats. We saw but few poisonous animals. Besides the dendrophis, the only ophidia killed in the country were snakes, with slate-coloured backs, and silver bellies, resembling the harmless “mas” or “hanash” of Somaliland, the Psammophis sibilaris (L.); C. moniliger Lacépède,—according to Mr. Blyth (“Journal of the As. Soc. of Bengal,” vol. xxiv., p. 306), who declares it to be not venomous—they abound in the houses and destroy the rats. The people speak of a yellow and brown-coated snake, eight feet long by five or six inches in diameter; it is probably a boa or rock-snake. Chúrá or frogs are numerous in the swamps, where the frog-concerts resemble those of the New World; and in the regions about the Tanganyika Lake a large variety makes night hideous with its croakings. Of the ranæ there are many species. The largest is probably the “matmalelo” of S. Africa; it is eaten by the Wagogo and other tribes. A smaller kind is of dark colour, and with long legs, which enable it to hop great distances. A third is of a dirty yellow, with brownish speckles. There is also a little green tree-frog, which adheres to the broad and almost perpendicular leaves of the thicker grasses. The leech is found in the lakes and rivers of the interior, as well as in Zanzibar and on both coasts of Africa; according to the Arabs they are of two kinds, large and small. The people neither take precautions against them when drinking at the streams, as the Somal do, nor are they aware of any officinal use for the animals; moreover, it is impossible to persuade a Msawahili to collect them: they are of P’hepo or fiendish nature, and never fail to haunt and harm their captor. Jongo, or huge millepedes, some attaining a length of half a foot, with shiny black bodies and red feet, are found in the fields and forests, especially during the rains: covered with epizoa, these animals present a disgusting appearance, and they seem, to judge from their spoils, to die off during the hot weather. At certain seasons there is a great variety of the papilionaceous family in the vicinity of waters where libellulæ or dragon-flies also abound. The country is visited at irregular times by flights of locusts, here called nzige. In spring the plants are covered in parts with the p’hánzí, a large pink and green variety, and the destructive species depicted and described by Salt: they rise from the earth like a glowing rose-coloured cloud, and die off about the beginning of the rains. The black leather-like variety, called by the Arabs “Satan’s ass,” is not uncommon: it is eaten by the Africans, as are many other edibles upon which strangers look with disgust. The Arabs describe a fly which infests the forest-patches of Unyamwezi: it is about the size of a small wasp, and is so fatal that cattle attacked by it are at once killed and eaten before they become carrion from its venomous effects. In parts the country is dotted with ant-hills, which, when old, become hard as sandstone: they are generally built by the termite under some shady tree, which prevents too rapid drying, and apparently the people have not learned, like their brethren in South Africa, to use them as ovens.
From Tura westward to Unyanyembe, the central district of Unyamwezi, caravans usually number seven marches, making a total of 60 rectilinear geographical miles. As far as Kigwa there is but one line of route; from that point travelling parties diverge far and wide, like ships making their different courses.
The races requiring notice in this region are two, the Wakimbu and the Wanyamwezi.
The Wakimbu, who are emigrants into Unyamwezi, claim a noble origin, and derive themselves from the broad lands running south of Unyanyembe as far westward as K’hokoro. About twenty masika, wet monsoons, or years ago, according to themselves, in company with their neighbours, the Wakonongo and the Wamia, they left Nguru, Usanga, and Usenga, in consequence of the repeated attacks of the Warori, and migrated to Kipiri, the district lying south of Tura; they have now extended into Mgunda Mk’hali and Unyanyembe, where they hold the land by permission of the Wanyamwezi. In these regions there are few obstacles to immigrants. They visit the Sultan, make a small present, obtain permission to settle, and name the village after their own chief; but the original proprietors still maintain their rights to the soil. The Wakimbu build firmly stockaded villages, tend cattle, and cultivate sorghum and maize, millet and pulse, cucumbers, and water-melons. Apparently they are poor, being generally clad in skins. They barter slaves and ivory in small quantities to the merchants, and some travel to the coast. They are considered treacherous by their neighbours, and Mapokera, the Sultan of Tura, is, according to the Arabs, prone to commit “avanies.” They are known by a number of small lines formed by raising the skin with a needle, and opening it by points literally between the hair of the temples and the eyebrows. In appearance they are dark and uncomely; their arms are bows and arrows, spears and knives stuck in the leathern waistbelt; some wear necklaces of curiously plaited straw, others a strip of white cowskin bound around the brow—a truly savage and African decoration. Their language differs from Kinyamwezi.
The Wanyamwezi tribe, the proprietors of the soil, is the typical race in this portion of Central Africa: its comparative industry and commercial activity have secured to it a superiority over the other kindred races.
The aspect of the Wanyamwezi is alone sufficient to disprove the existence of very elevated lands in this part of the African interior. They are usually of a dark sepia-brown, rarely coloured like diluted Indian ink, as are the Wahiao and slave races to the south, with negroid features markedly less Semitic than the people of the eastern coast. The effluvium from their skins, especially after exercise or excitement, marks their connection with the negro. The hair curls crisply, but it grows to the length of four or five inches before it splits; it is usually twisted into many little ringlets or hanks; it hangs down like a fringe to the neck, and is combed off the forehead after the manner of the ancient Egyptians and the modern Hottentots. The beard is thin and short, there are no whiskers, and the moustachio—when not plucked out—is scant and straggling. Most of the men and almost all the women remove the eyelashes, and pilar hair rarely appears to grow. The normal figure of the race is tall and stout, and the women are remarkable for the elongation of the mammary organs. Few have small waists, and the only lean men in the land are the youths, the sick, and the famished. This race is said to be long-lived, and it is not deficient in bodily strength and savage courage. The clan-mark is a double line of little cuts, like the marks of cupping, made by a friend with a knife or razor, along the temporal fossæ from the external edges of the eyebrows to the middle of the cheeks or to the lower jaws. Sometimes a third line, or a band of three small lines, is drawn down the forehead to the bridge of the nose. The men prefer a black, charcoal being the substance generally used, the women a blue colour, and the latter sometimes ornament their faces with little perpendicular scars below the eyes. They do not file the teeth into a saw-shape as seen amongst the southern races, but they generally form an inner triangular or wedge-shaped aperture by chipping away the internal corners of the two front incisors like the Damaras, and the women extract the lower central teeth. Both sexes enlarge the lobes of the ears. In many parts of the country skins are more commonly worn than cloth, except by the Sultans and the wealthier classes. The women wear the long tobe of the coast, tightly wrapped round either above or more commonly below the breast; the poorer classes veil the bosom with a square or softened skin; the remainder of the dress is a kilt or short petticoat of the same material extending from waist to knee. Maidens never cover the breast, and children are rarely clothed; the infant, as usual in East Africa, is carried in a skin fastened by thongs behind the parent’s back. The favourite ornaments are beads, of which the red coral, the pink, and the “pigeon-eggs” made at Nuremberg are preferred. From the neck depend strings of beads with kiwangwa, disks of shell brought from the coast, and crescents of hippopotamus teeth country made, and when the beard is long it is strung with red and particoloured beads. Brass and copper bangles or massive rings are worn upon the wrists, the forearm bears the ponderous kitindi or coil bracelet, and the arm above the elbow is sometimes decorated with circlets of ivory or with a razor in an ivory étui; the middle is girt with a coil of wire twisted round a rope of hair or fibre, and the ankles are covered with small iron bells and the rings of thin brass, copper, or iron wire, called sambo. When travelling, a goat’s horn, used as a bugle, is secured over the right shoulder by a lanyard and allowed to hang by the left side: in the house many wear a smaller article of the same kind, hollowed inside and containing various articles intended as charms, and consecrated by the Mganga or medicine-man. The arms are slender assegais with the shoulders of the blade rounded off: they are delivered, as by the Somal, with the thumb and forefinger after a preliminary of vibratory motion, but the people want the force and the dexterity of the Kafirs. Some have large spears for thrusting, and men rarely leave the hut without their bows and arrows, the latter unpoisoned, but curiously and cruelly barbed. They make also the long double-edged knives called sime, and different complications of rungu or knob-kerries, some of them armed with an iron lance-head upon the wooden bulge. Dwarf battle-axes are also seen, but not so frequently as amongst the western races on the Tanganyika Lake. The shield in Unyamwezi resembles that of Usagara; it is however rarely used.
There are but few ceremonies amongst the Wanyamwezi. A woman about to become a mother retires from the hut to the jungle, and after a few hours returns with a child wrapped in goatskin upon her back, and probably carrying a load of firewood on her head. The medical treatment of the Arabs with salt and various astringents for forty days is here unknown. Twins are not common as amongst the Kafir race, and one of the two is invariably put to death; the universal custom amongst these tribes is for the mother to wrap a gourd or calabash in skins, to place it to sleep with, and to feed it like, the survivor. If the wife die without issue, the widower claims from her parents the sum paid to them upon marriage; if she leave a child, the property is preserved for it. When the father can afford it, a birth is celebrated by copious libations of pombe. Children are suckled till the end of the second year. Their only education is in the use of the bow and arrow; after the fourth summer the boy begins to learn archery with diminutive weapons, which are gradually increased in strength. Names are given without ceremony; and as in the countries to the eastward, many of the heathens have been called after their Arab visitors. Circumcision is not practised by this people. The children in Unyamwezi generally are the property not of the uncle but of the father, who can sell or slay them without blame; in Usukuma or the northern lands, however, succession and inheritance are claimed by the nephews or sisters’ sons. The Wanyamwezi have adopted the curious practice of leaving property to their illegitimate children by slave girls or concubines, to the exclusion of their issue by wives; they justify it by the fact of the former requiring their assistance more than the latter, who have friends and relatives to aid them. As soon as the boy can walk he tends the flocks; after the age of ten he drives the cattle to pasture, and, considering himself independent of his father, he plants a tobacco-plot and aspires to build a hut for himself. There is not a boy “which cannot earn his own meat.”
Another peculiarity of the Wanyamwezi is the position of the Wahárá or unmarried girls. Until puberty they live in the father’s house; after that period the spinsters of the village, who usually number from seven to a dozen, assemble together and build for themselves at a distance from their homes a hut where they can receive their friends without parental interference. There is but one limit to community in single life: if the Mhárá or “maiden” be likely to become a mother, her “young man” must marry her under pain of mulct; and if she die in childbirth, her father demands from her lover a large fine for having taken away his daughter’s life. Marriage takes place when the youth can afford to pay the price for a wife: it varies according to circumstances from one to ten cows. The wife is so far the property of the husband that he can claim damages from the adulterer; he may not, however, sell her, except when in difficulties. The marriage is celebrated with the usual carouse, and the bridegroom takes up his quarters in his wife’s home, not under her father’s roof. Polygamy is the rule with the wealthy. There is little community of interests and apparently a lack of family affection in these tribes. The husband, when returning from the coast laden with cloth, will refuse a single shukkah to his wife, and the wife succeeding to an inheritance will abandon her husband to starvation. The man takes charge of the cattle, goats, sheep, and poultry; the woman has power over the grain and the vegetables; and each must grow tobacco, having little hope of borrowing from the other. Widows left with houses, cattle, and fields, usually spend their substance in supporting lovers, who are expected occasionally to make presents in return. Hence no coast slave in Wanyamwezi is ever known to keep a shukkah of cloth.
The usual way of disposing of a corpse in former times was, to carry it out on the head and to throw it into some jungle strip where the fisi or cynhyæna abounds,—a custom which accounts for the absence of graveyards. The Wanyamwezi at first objected to the Arabs publicly burying their dead in their fields, for fear of pollution; they would assemble in crowds to close the way against a funeral party. The merchants, however, persevered till they succeeded in establishing a right. When a Mnyamwezi dies in a strange country, and his comrades take the trouble to inter him, they turn the face of the corpse towards the mother’s village, a proceeding which shows more sentiment than might be expected from them. The body is buried standing, or tightly bound in a heap, or placed in a sitting position with the arms clasping the knees: if the deceased be a great man, a sheep and a bullock are slaughtered for a funeral feast, the skin is placed over his face, and the hide is bound to his back. When a sultan dies in a foreign land his body is buried upon the spot, and his head, or what remains of it, is carried back for sepulture to his own country. The chiefs of Unyamwezi generally are interred by a large assemblage of their subjects with cruel rites. A deep pit is sunk, with a kind of vault or recess projecting from it: in this the corpse, clothed with skin and hide, and holding a bow in the right hand, is placed sitting, with a pot of pombe, upon a dwarf stool, whilst sometimes one, but more generally three female slaves, one on each side and the third in front, are buried alive to preserve their lord from the horrors of solitude. A copious libation of pombe upon the heaped-up earth concludes the ceremony. According to the Arabs, the Wasukuma inter all their sultans in a jungle north of Unyanyembe, and the neighbouring peasants deposit before seed-time small offerings of grain at the Mzimo or Fetiss-house which marks the spot.
The habitations of the eastern Wanyamwezi are the Tembe, which in the west give way to the circular African hut; among the poorer sub-tribes the dwelling is a mere stack of straw. The best Tembe have large projecting eaves supported by uprights: cleanliness, however, can never be expected in them. Having no limestone, the people ornament the inner and outer walls with long lines of ovals formed by pressing the finger tips, after dipping them into ashes and water for whitewash, and into red clay or black mud for variety of colour. With this primitive material they sometimes attempt rude imitations of nature—human beings and serpents. In some parts the cross appears, but the people apparently ignore it as a symbol. Rude carving is also attempted upon the massive posts at the entrances of villages, but the figures, though to appearance idolatrous, are never worshipped. The household furniture of the Tembe differs little from that described in the villages generally. The large sloping Kitanda, or bedstead of peeled tree-branch, supported by forked sticks, and provided with a bedding of mat and cowhide, occupies the greater part of the outer room. The triangle of clay cones forming the hearth are generally placed for light near the wall-side opposite the front door; and the rest of the supellex consists of large stationary bark cornbins, of gourds and bandboxes slung from the roof, earthen-pots of black clay, huge ladles, pipes, grass-mats, grinding-stones, and arms hung to a trimmed and branchy tree trunk planted upright in a corner. The rooms are divided by party walls, which, except when separating families, seldom reach to the ceiling. The fireplace acts as lamp by night, and the door is the only chimney.
The characteristic of the Mnyamwezi village is the “İwánzá”—a convenience resulting probably from the instinct of the sexes, who prefer not to mingle, and for the greater freedom of life and manners. Of these buildings there are two in every settlement, generally built at opposite sides, fronting the normal Mrimba-tree, which sheds its filmy shade over the public court-yard. That of the women, being a species of harem, was not visited; as travellers and strangers are always admitted into the male İwánzá, it is more readily described. This public-house is a large hut, somewhat more substantial than those adjoining, often smeared with smooth clay, and decorated here and there with broad columns of the ovals before described, and the prints of palms dipped in ashes and placed flat like the hands in ancient Egyptian buildings. The roof is generally a flying thatch raised a foot above the walls—an excellent plan for ventilation in these regions. Outside, the İwánzá is defended against the incursions of cattle by roughly-barked trunks of trees resting upon stout uprights: in this space men sit, converse, and smoke. The two doorways are protected by rude charms suspended from the lintel, hares’ tails, zebras’ manes, goats’ horns, and other articles of prophylactic virtue. Inside, half the depth is appropriated to the Ubiri, a huge standing bedframe, formed, like the plank-benches of a civilised guard-room, by sleepers lying upon horizontal cross-bars: these are supported by forked trunks about two feet long planted firmly in the ground. The floor is of tamped earth. The furniture of the İwánzá consists of a hearth and grinding-stone; spears, sticks, arrows, and shillelaghs are stuck to smoke in the dingy rafter ceiling, or are laid upon hooks of crooked wood depending from the sooty cross-beams: the corners are occupied by bellows, elephant-spears, and similar articles. In this “public” the villagers spend their days, and often, even though married, their nights, gambling, eating, drinking pombe, smoking bhang and tobacco, chatting, and sleeping like a litter of puppies destitute of clothing, and using one another’s backs, breasts, and stomachs as pillows. The İwánzá appears almost peculiar to Unyamwezi.
In Unyamwezi the sexes do not eat together: even the boys would disdain to be seen sitting at meat with their mothers. The men feed either in their cottages or more generally in the İwánzá: they make, when they can, two meals during the day—in the morning, a breakfast, which is often omitted for economy, and a dinner about 3 P.M. During the interim they chew tobacco, and, that failing, indulge in a quid of clay. It probably contains some animal matter, but the chief reason for using it is apparently the necessity to barbarians of whiling away the time when not sleeping by exercising their jaws. They prefer the “sweet earth,” that is to say, the clay of ant-hills: the Arabs have tried it without other effects but nausea. The custom, however, is not uncommon upon both coasts of Africa: it takes, in fact, the place of the mastic of Chios, the kat of Yemen, the betel and toasted grains of India and the farther East, and the ashes of the Somali country. The Wanyamwezi, and indeed the East-African tribes generally, have some curious food prejudices. Before their closer intercourse with the Arabs they used to keep poultry, but, like the Gallas and the Somal, who look upon the fowl as a kind of vulture, they would not eat it: even in the present day they avoid eggs. Some will devour animals that have died of disease, and carrion,—the flesh of lions and leopards, elephants and rhinoceroses, asses, wild cats and rats, beetles and white ants;—others refuse to touch mutton or clean water-fowl, declaring that it is not their custom. The prejudice has not, however, been reduced to a system, as amongst the tribes of southern Africa. They rarely taste meat except upon the march, where the prospect of gain excites them to an unusual indulgence: when a bullock is killed, they either jerk the meat, or dry it upon a dwarf platform of sticks raised above a slow and smoky fire, after which it will keep for some days. The usual food is the ugali or porridge of boiled flour: they find, however, a variety of edible herbs in the jungle, and during the season they luxuriate upon honey and sour milk. No Mnyamwezi, however, will own to repletion unless he has “sat upon pombe,”—in other words, has drunk to intoxication; and the chiefs pride themselves upon living entirely upon beef and stimulants.
The Wanyamwezi have won for themselves a reputation by their commercial industry. Encouraged by the merchants, they are the only professional porters of East Africa; and even amongst them, the Wakalaganza, Wasumbwa, and Wasukuma are the only tribes who regularly visit the coast in this capacity. They are now no longer “honest and civil to strangers”—semi-civilisation has hitherto tended to degradation. They seem to have learned but little by their intercourse with the Arabs. Commerce with them is still in its infancy. They have no idea of credit, although in Karagwah and the northern kingdoms payment may be delayed for a period of two years. They cannot, like some of their neighbours, bargain: a man names the article which he requires, and if it be not forthcoming he will take no other. The porters, who linger upon the coast or in the island of Zanzibar, either cut grass for asses, carry stones and mortar to the town, for which they receive a daily hire of from two to eight pice, or they obtain from the larger landholders permission to reclaim and cultivate a plot of ground for vegetables and manioc. They have little of the literature, songs and tales, common amongst barbarians; and though they occasionally indulge in speeches, they do not, like many kindred tribes, cultivate eloquence. On the march they beguile themselves with chanting for hours together half a dozen words eternally repeated. Their language is copious but confused, and they are immoderately fond of simple and meaningless syllables used as interjections. Their industry is confined to weaving coarse cloths of unbleached cotton, neatly-woven baskets, wooden milk-bowls, saddle-bags for their asses, and arms. They rear asses and load them lightly when travelling to the coast, but they have not yet learned to ride them. Though they carefully fence and ditch their fields, they have never invented a plough, confining themselves to ridging the land with the laborious hoe. They rarely sell one another, nor do they much encourage the desertion of slaves. The wild bondsman, when running away, is sometimes appropriated by his captor, but a Muwallid or domestic slave is always restored after a month or two. The Arabs prefer to purchase men sold under suspicion of magic; they rarely flee, fearing lest their countrymen should put them to death.
As has been said, the government of Unyamwezi is conducted by a multitude of petty chiefs. The ruling classes are thus called: Mtemi or Mwáme is the chief or sultan, Mgáwe (in the plural Wágáwe) the principal councillor, and Mánácháro, or Mnyapara (plural Wányápárá) the elder. The ryots or subjects on the other hand are collectively styled Wasengi. The most powerful chiefs are Fundikira of Unyanyembe, Masanga of Msene, and Kafrira of Kiríra. The dignity of Mtemi is hereditary. He has power of life and death over his subjects, and he seldom condescends to any but mortal punishment. His revenue is composed of additions to his private property by presents from travellers, confiscation of effects in cases of felony or magic, by the sale of subjects, and by treasure trove. Even if a man kill his own slave, the slave’s effects lapse to the ruler. The villagers must give up all ivory found in the jungles, although the hunters are allowed to retain the tusks of the slaughtered animals.
A few brief remarks concerning Fundikira, the chief of Unyamwezi in 1858, may serve to illustrate the condition of the ruling class in Unyamwezi. This chief was travelling towards the coast as a porter in a caravan, when he heard of his father’s death: he at once stacked his load and prepared to return home and rule. The rest of the gang, before allowing him to depart, taunted him severely, exclaiming, partly in jest, partly in earnest, “Ah! now thou art still our comrade, but presently thou wilt torture and slay, fine and flog us.” Fundikira proceeding to his native country inherited, as is the custom, all his father’s property and widows; he fixed himself at Ititenya, presently numbered ten wives, who have borne him only three children, built 300 houses for his slaves and dependants, and owned 2000 head of cattle. He lived in some state, declining to call upon strangers, and, though not demanding still obtaining large presents. Becoming obese by age and good living, he fell ill in the autumn of 1858, and, as usual, his relations were suspected of compassing his end by Uchawi, or black magic. In these regions the death of one man causes many. The Mganga was summoned to apply the usual ordeal. After administering a mystic drug, he broke the neck of a fowl, and splitting it into two lengths inspected the interior. If blackness or blemish appear about the wings, it denotes the treachery of children, relations and kinsmen; the backbone convicts the mother and grandmother; the tail shows that the criminal is the wife, the thighs the concubines, and the injured shanks or feet the other slaves. Having fixed upon the class of the criminals, they are collected together by the Mganga, who, after similarly dosing a second hen, throws her up into the air above the heads of the crowd and singles out the person upon whom she alights. Confession is extorted by tying the thumb backwards till it touches the wrist or by some equally barbarous mode of question. The consequence of condemnation is certain and immediate death; the mode is chosen by the Mganga. Some are speared, others are beheaded or “ammazati,”—clubbed:—a common way is to bind the cranium between two stiff pieces of wood which are gradually tightened by cords till the brain bursts out from the sutures. For women they practise a peculiarly horrible kind of impalement. These atrocities continue until the chief recovers or dies: at the commencement of his attack, in one household eighteen souls, male and female, had been destroyed; should his illness be protracted, scores will precede him to the grave, for the Mchawi or magician must surely die.
The Wanyamwezi will generally sell their criminals and captives; when want drives, they part with their wives, their children, and even their parents. For economy, they import their serviles from Ujiji and the adjoining regions; from the people lying towards the south-east angle of the Tanganyika Lake, as the Wafipa, the Wapoka, and the Wagara; and from the Nyanza races, and the northern kingdoms of Karagwah, Uganda, and Unyoro.