It is not very easy to locate my present abode on the map. Masasi and its exact latitude and longitude have been known to me for years, but of this strangely named place,^[17] where I drove in my tent-pegs a few days ago, I never even heard before I had entered the area of the inland tribes.

One trait is common to all Oriental towns, their beauty at a distance and the disillusionment in store for those who set foot within their walls. Knudsen has done nothing but rave about Chingulungulu ever since we reached Masasi. He declared that its baraza was the highest achievement of East African architecture, that it had a plentiful supply of delicious water, abundance of all kinds of meat, and unequalled fruit and vegetables. He extolled its population, exclusively composed, according to him, of high-bred gentlemen and good-looking women, and its well-built, spacious houses. Finally, its situation, he said, made it a convenient centre for excursions in all directions over the plain. I have been here too short a time to bring all the details of this highly coloured picture to the test of actual fact, but this much I have already ascertained, that neither place nor people are quite so paradisaical as the enthusiastic Nils would have me believe.

To relate my experiences in their proper order, I must, however, go back to our departure from Masasi which, owing to a variety of unfortunate circumstances, took place earlier than originally planned. To begin with, there was the changed attitude of the inhabitants, who at first, as already stated, showed the greatest amiability, and allowed us, in the most obliging way, to inspect their homes and buy their household furnishings. In my later sketching and collecting expeditions, I came everywhere upon closed doors and apparently deserted compounds. This phenomenon, too, comes under the heading of racial psychology. However much he may profit by the foreigner’s visits, the African prefers to have his own hut to himself.^[18]

In the second place, we began, in the course of a prolonged residence, to discover the drawbacks of our quarters in the rest-house. Knudsen, who is very sensitive in this respect, insisted that it was damp, and we soon found that the subsoil water, which indeed reached the surface as a large spring on the hillside a little below the house, was unpleasantly close to our floor. Even on the march up from the coast, Knudsen had suffered from occasional attacks of fever. These now became so frequent and severe that he was scarcely fit for work. His faithful old servant, Ali, nursed him with the most touching devotion, and never left his bedside night or day.

I had myself on various occasions noticed a curious irritation of the scalp, for which I could discover no cause, in spite of repeated examination. One day, while hastening across from the dark-room to the rest-house, with some wet plates in my hand, I was conscious of intense discomfort among my scanty locks, and called out to Moritz to take off my hat and look if there was anything inside it. He obeyed, inspected the hat carefully inside and out, and, on pursuing his researches under the lining, turned grey in the face, and ejaculated with evident horror, “Wadudu wabaya!”^[19] The case becoming interesting, I put my plates down and instituted a minute investigation into Moritz’s find, which proved to consist of a number of assorted animalcules, with a sprinkling of larger creatures resembling ticks. This was somewhat startling. I had come to Africa with a mind entirely at ease as regards malaria—I swear by Koch and fear nothing. But remittent fever is another matter. In Dar es Salam I had heard enough and to spare about this latest discovery of the great Berlin bacteriologist, and how it is produced by an inconspicuous tick-like insect which burrows in the soil of all sites occupied for any length of time by natives. The mosquito-net, I was told, is a sufficient protection against the full grown papasi, as they are called, but not against their hopeful progeny, which can slip unhindered through the finest mesh. This particular kind of fever, moreover, was said to be most especially trying—you were never seriously ill, and yet never really well, or fit for work; and nothing, not even quinine, would avail to keep the attacks from recurring every few days. Small wonder if, at the sight of these wadudu wabaya in the shape of ticks, I too turned pale at the thought of the ignoble end possibly awaiting my enterprise before it was well begun.

I had already found out that Masasi was not precisely an abode of all the virtues, and that an appreciable percentage of the soldiers forming the garrison at the boma were suffering from venereal diseases; but the incident which precipitated our departure was the following. The akida, or local headman (a former sergeant in the Field Force), was the owner of a small herd of cattle, and with the good-nature which is one of the most striking traits in the African character, earned my warmest gratitude by sending me a small jar of milk every day. After a time we heard, and the rumour gained in definiteness with each repetition, that the akida was a leper. I could not refuse the milk, which continued to arrive regularly, and came in very handy for fixing my pencil drawings.

In their totality the evils enumerated may not signify more than a succession of pin-pricks; but even such trifling interferences with human well-being may in the end appreciably diminish one’s enjoyment of life. With the attractions of Chingulungulu as an additional inducement, it was not surprising that only a day or two intervened between the first suggestion that we should migrate southward and our actual departure. With their usual monkeylike agility, my carriers one evening packed a large heap of specimens in convenient loads, and as quickly the order was given to Saleh, the corporal in command of the askari, and Pesa mbili, the leader of the porters, “Safari to-morrow at six!”

Next to Matola, the Yao chief of Chingulungulu, no man in the country is oftener in men’s mouths than his illustrious colleague and fellow tribesman, Nakaam, of Chiwata in the north-western part of the Makonde plateau. The Europeans on the coast are not agreed as to which of these two chiefs is the more powerful. In the interior, however, Matola seems to be far more looked up to by the natives than the chief of Chiwata. Nevertheless, I thought it absolutely necessary to visit the latter and his people. My plans are not based on any fixed line of march, but were expressly arranged so that I should be able to take whatever route circumstances might render most convenient.

I must confess that my stay at Masasi has turned out a disappointment as regards the customs, habits and ideas of the natives, though I have gained a very fair insight into the outward, material details of their life. But here too, Nils Knudsen is ready with consolation and encouragement. “What can you expect, Professor? the people here are a terribly mixed lot, after all, and have lost all their own traditions and customs. Don’t waste any more time in this wretched hole of a Masasi, but come to Chingulungulu; you have no idea what a fine place that is!”

We marched at daybreak on July 31. The road through the Masasi district, as already mentioned, skirts the great chain of insular mountains on the east, passing, at a sufficient height to afford an extensive view to the east and south, over an escarpment formed by the products of aerial denudation from the gneiss peaks. Did I say the plain? it is an ocean that we see spread out before our eyes, a white, boundless expanse, studded with islands, here one, there another, and yonder, on the misty horizon, whole archipelagoes. This wonderful spectacle, passing away all too quickly as the sun climbs higher—the peaks rising like islands from the sea of the morning mist, while our caravan trails its length along the shore—pictures for us as in a mirror the aspect it presented in those distant ages when the blue waves of the primæval ocean rolled where now the blue smoke of lowly huts ascends to the heavens.

The goal of our first day’s march was Mwiti, where, to judge from the importance given to it on the map, I expected a large native settlement. Not far from the Masasi Mission station, the road to Mwiti branches off from the Coast road on the right. I order a halt; the column opens out; I shout into the fresh morning air “Wapagazi kwa Lindi!” (“the carriers for Lindi!”); and the oldest and also the tallest of my porters, a Mnyamwezi of pronounced Masai type, strides up with a heavy, swaying motion like a camel.

His name, Kofia tule, was at first a puzzle to me. I knew that kofia means a cap, but, curiously enough it never occurred to me to look up tule (which, moreover, I assumed to be a Nyamwezi word) in the dictionary. That it was supposed to involve a joke of some sort, I gathered from the general laughter, whenever I asked its meaning. At last we arrived at the fact that kofia tule means a small, flat cap—in itself a ridiculous name for a man, but doubly so applied to this black super-man with the incredibly vacant face.

Kofia tule, then, comes slowly forward, followed by six more Wanyamwezi, and some local men whom I have engaged as extra carriers. With him as their mnyampara they are to take my collections down to the Coast, and get them stored till my return in the cellars of the District Commissioner’s office at Lindi. The final instructions are delivered, and then comes the order, “You here, go to the left,—we are going to the right. March!” Our company takes some time to get into proper marching order, but at last everything goes smoothly. A glance northward over the plain assures us that Kofia tule and his followers have got up the correct safari speed; and we plunge into the uninhabited virgin pori.

There is something very monotonous and fatiguing about the march through these open woods. It is already getting on for noon, and I am half-asleep on my mule, when I catch sight of two black figures, gun in hand, peeping cautiously round a clump of bushes in front. Can they be Wangoni?

For some days past we have heard flying rumours that Shabruma, the notorious leader of the Wangoni in the late rebellion, and the last of our opponents remaining unsubdued, is planning an attack on Nakaam, and therefore threatening this very neighbourhood. Just as I look round for my gun-bearer, a dozen throats raise the joyful shout of “Mail-carrier!” This is my first experience of the working of the German Imperial Post in East Africa; I learnt in due course that, though by no means remunerative to the department, it is as nearly perfect as any human institution can be. It sounds like an exaggeration, but it is absolutely true, to say that all mail matter, even should it be only a single picture post-card, is delivered to the addressee without delay, wherever he may be within the postal area. The native runners, of course, have a very different sort of duty to perform from the few miles daily required of our home functionaries. With letters and papers packed in a water-tight envelope of oiled paper and American cloth, and gun on shoulder, the messenger trots along, full of the importance of his errand, and covers enormous distances, sometimes, it is said, double the day’s march of an ordinary caravan. If the road lies through a district rendered unsafe by lions, leopards, or human enemies, two men are always sent together. The black figures rapidly approach us, ground arms with soldierly precision and report in proper form:—Letters from Lindi for the Bwana mkubwa and the Bwana mdogo—the great and the little master. As long as Mr. Ewerbeck was with us, it was not easy for the natives to establish the correct precedence between us. Since they ranked me as the new captain, they could not possibly call me Bwana mdogo. Now, however, there is not the slightest difficulty,—there are only two Europeans, and I being, not only the elder, but also the leader of the expedition, there is nothing to complicate the usual gradation of ranks.

By the middle of the afternoon, a broken hilly country had taken the place of the undulating plain. Every few minutes our path was crossed by clear streams, running in steep-sided gullies almost impassable for my mule and the heavily-laden carriers. The vegetation became greener and more abundant, but at the same time the heat in these narrow ravines proved well-nigh suffocating. I rode along, trying to read my home letters, regardless of the logs which from time to time formed barriers across the path, or the thorny bushes which overhung it. Our guide, no other than Salim Matola, the lanky jack-of-all-trades, had marched on far ahead. I had on the previous day, attracted by his many good qualities, formally engaged him as my collector-in-chief; whereupon, true to his character, he inaugurated his new functions by demanding a substantial sum in advance. Unfortunately for him, I am already too old in African experience to be caught so easily. “First show me what you can do,” was my response, “and then in a few weeks’ time you may ask again. Now be off and be quick about it!” Salim had declared on oath that he knew the road well. The map is not to be relied on for this part of the country; but according to our calculation we should have reached Mwiti long before this. With a sudden resolution I struck my heels into the flanks of my lazily-ambling mule and, starting him into a gallop, soon overtook the guide striding along at the head of the column. “Mwiti wapi?” (“Where is Mwiti?”) I roared at him. “Sijui Bwana” (“I don’t know, sir,”) was the somewhat plaintive answer. “Simameni!” (“Stop!”), I shouted at the top of my voice, and then followed a grand shauri. None of my carriers knew the country, nor did any of the askari or their boys appear any better informed. There was nothing for it but to march by the map, that is to say, in our case, turn to the right about till we struck the Mwiti stream again, and then follow it up till we reached the place itself. It was late in the afternoon when the longed-for goal at last came in sight. Salim Matola now brought back a half-rupee received from me, protesting that it was “bad,” by which he meant that the Emperor’s effigy had sustained a very slight damage. The young man’s exit from my presence was more speedy than dignified, and illustrated the miraculous effect of an energetic gesture with the kiboko (hippo-hide whip). But such are the ways of the native.

Africa is the land of contrasts. Masasi, at a height of from 1,300 to 2,000 feet, was on the whole pleasantly cool, while we had been half-roasted on the march across the plain between the insular mountains and the Makonde plateau; and now at Mwiti a heavy fur coat would have been acceptable, so bitterly cold is the strong wind which, directly the sun has set, sweeps down from the heights with their maximum atmospheric pressure to the rarefied air of the plain which has been baking in the heat all day long. Our camping-place seemed to have been specially designed to catch all the winds of heaven. With startling strategic insight, Nakaam has chosen for his palace a site on a promontory ending a long range of heights and surrounded on three sides by a loop of the Mwiti River. On these three sides it falls away in precipitous cliffs, the only easy access being from the south. If I call Nakaam’s house a palace, I am not exaggerating. This chief has not only the reputation of being the shrewdest native in the southern district, but he must be comparatively wealthy; otherwise he would scarcely have been able to employ a competent builder from the Coast to erect for him a really imposing house with many rooms and a high, steep roof. The rooms are actually well lighted with real though unglazed windows, which, in the apartments devoted to the chief’s harem, can be closed with shutters. The architect has put the finishing touch to his work by ornamenting all the woodwork in the typical Coast style with incised arabesques. From my long chair, into which I threw myself quite worn out on arriving, I gazed in astonishment at the wide verandah shading the front of this, considering its surroundings, doubly remarkable building. Suddenly I started up and, leaping over the confusion of trunks and packing cases just laid down under the verandah by the carriers, hastened to one of the windows, scarcely able to believe my eyes. A swastika, the “fylfot,” the ancient symbol of good fortune, here in the centre of the Dark Continent! “May you bring me luck too!” I murmured to myself, still greatly surprised. In fact, it was the well-known sign, or something exceedingly like it, neatly inlaid in ivory in the centre of the shutter. When Nakaam appeared, within four hours, in response to an urgent summons despatched on our arrival, one of my first questions, after the customary ceremonious salutations, related to the name and meaning of the figure let into this window-shutter. My disappointment was great when he simply answered “Nyota—a star.” We must therefore suppose that the swastika is unknown to the natives of the interior. In the present case it was probably, like the rest of the ornamentation, introduced by the builder from the Coast. At Mwiti we remained a day and a half and two nights, without much benefit to my ethnographical collection. Either Nakaam has very little influence over his subjects, or they must be very few in number. The passing traveller can scarcely judge of this, for the hilly nature of the country prevents any comprehensive survey, and the tribes hereabouts live scattered over so wide an extent of ground that the small area visible in one view is no criterion for the whole. All the more varied and interesting are the psychological observations I have been able to make in this place. Nakaam himself is a short, stout man of middle age, dressed quite after the Swahili fashion in a long white kanzu or shirt-like upper garment. As to his nationality I had been already informed—the jolly pombe drinkers at Masasi had told me with malicious grins that Nakaam in his conceit called himself a Yao, but was in reality “only” a Makua.

In the evening, Nakaam, Knudsen and I were sitting under the verandah, by the light of my lamp, which, however, maintained a very precarious existence in spite of all the mats and blankets we had hung up to windward, and was more than once extinguished by the furious hurricane which roared down from the crest of the plateau. Nakaam accepted with much dignity two bottles of so-called “jumbe’s cognac,”^[20] which I found among my stores, and the conversation began with a discussion of Chiwata, its situation, the number of its inhabitants, the tribes they belonged to, and similar matters, We ascertained that Nakaam’s subjects were chiefly Wayao, “And you—are you a Yao yourself?” “Ndio” (“Yes”), he replied with evident conviction. But I could not refrain from objecting, “All the men in this country say you are not a Yao but a Makua.”

The negro, unfortunately, cannot blush^[21] or it would have been very interesting to see whether this noble representative of the race was liable to that reflex action. He wriggled for a time, and at last, in a quite inimitable accent, came his answer, “Long ago, it is true, I was a Makua, but now, for a very long time, I have been a Yao.”

His metamorphosis will appear somewhat strange to those who have paid no attention to African ethnography. It is only intelligible in the light of what has taken place among the population of this region in the course of the last hundred years. In Livingstone’s time, between forty and fifty years ago, the whole Rovuma territory was at peace, the people who had lived there from time immemorial planted their millet and manioc, and went hunting whenever they pleased.^[22] Then from the far south, hostile elements swept into the country in successive waves, rolling northward on both shores of Lake Nyasa. Bands of armed warriors, in sudden onset, without the slightest warning, throw themselves on the old, defenceless tribes, and sweep them before their onward rush. Not till they reach the north end of Nyasa does the devastating flood come to a stop, two or three Zulu kingdoms—for the intruders belong to that brave and warlike race—are founded, and a new era begins. But what consequences ensue for the whole of East Africa! In wars and raids repeated again and again over hundreds of miles, the new rulers of the land have made a wilderness of the old thickly-populated and well-tilled land. Under the name of the Mazitu, they were the terror of the country between Nyasa and Tanganyika by the end of the sixties. Later on, in the early days of German colonial rule, they became, under that of Mafiti, a far worse terror to the whole vast region between Nyasa and the Indian Ocean. Under the further designations of Wamachonde, Magwangwara and Wangoni, they still form an unpleasant topic of conversation at caravan camp-fires. To-day, indeed, there is scant justification for the dread they inspire, for within the last few years the supremacy of these Zulus has come to an end—the effect of the German arms has been too lasting. Only one of their chiefs, the Shabruma already mentioned, is still, with a small band of followers, making the country unsafe; all the others have unconditionally accepted our terms.

This Wangoni invasion—Wangoni is the name which by tacit agreement is used to include all these immigrant South African elements—has been the proximate cause of the following remarkable process.

The old residents of the country, so far as they remained—for in many cases their men were all killed by the Wangoni, and the women and children carried off to the cool, damp region east of the north end of Lake Nyasa, and incorporated with the Zulu tribe—saw that the Mngoni, with his short spear, his oval hide shield and his fantastic ornaments of vulture’s feathers, strips of leopard-skin and so forth, was irresistible. These people never understood that the formidable appearance of the enemy was only in a slight degree responsible for this result, which in truth was mainly achieved by the greater courage of the Wangoni and their serried charge with the short stabbing assagai—a terrible weapon, indeed, at close quarters. They took the appearance for the reality, copied the Wangoni style of dress, and tried also to imitate the rest of their martial equipment. This notion is prevalent among the same tribes even at the present day.^[23] This whole process may be described, in biological terms, as a kind of mimicry, still more interesting by reason of the circumstance that it has found its exact counterpart in the north of the colony, near Kilimanjaro, and in the districts west and south-west of it. There the resident Bantu tribes, having experienced the superiority of the Masai with their gigantic spears, their huge, strong leather shields, and their fantastic war ornaments, have immediately drawn their own conclusions, and to-day one sees all these tribes—Wachaga, Wapare, Wagweno, Wagogo, and so on, in a get-up which makes the nickname “apes of the Masai” appear quite justified.

Here in the south, however, the part played by mimicry in native life is by no means exhausted by this aping of the Wangoni. The far-reaching confusion which, since the Zulu king, Tshaka, took the stage in 1818, has never allowed South Africa to come to rest, has set off other tribes besides the Zulus on a northward migration. The peoples most immediately affected by this were the Yaos and the Makua: the former are penetrating from their original seats between the Rovuma and the Zambezi, slowly but persistently into the German territory, while the Yaos are moving forward, as imperceptibly and perhaps still more persistently, from their country which lies further west, at the south end of Nyasa. Thus these two waves of population collide just here, in the district I am studying, at an acute angle, and this was one of my principal reasons for proceeding to this remote corner, when the rebellion prevented my journey to Iraku.

Now the Makua, or at least some individuals among them, seem to be like many Germans abroad—they begin to look on themselves and their nationality as something inferior and contemptible, and their first preoccupation is to dismiss from their minds every recollection of their own country and their native language. In this country, since the terror of the Wangoni, whose last raids took place about 1880, has somewhat faded from the memory of the rising generation, the Wayao are the aristocrats. No wonder that so vain a man as Nakaam undoubtedly is, flatly denies his own nationality, in order to be considered socially up to the mark.

A most comical effect is produced when a native wishes to emphasize some notion as being quite out of the common—as for instance when he wishes to say that something is very high or very distant, very beautiful, or only to be expected in the far future, or the like. This is expressed by an inimitable screwing up of the voice on the adjective or adverb in question to the highest possible falsetto. I shall come back later to this, which is an unusually interesting point in linguistics; for the present I can only recall with intense pleasure my amusement when Nakaam, in saying “Mimi Makua, lakini wa zamani” (“I am a Makua, but one of long ago”) so lengthened out the syllables “mani” and elevated the “ni” so far into the top of his head, that I feared he would never find his way back to the present.

Having thus convinced Nakaam, though not precisely to his own satisfaction, of his real origin, we were about to pass on to a different and, for him, more pleasing topic, when we suddenly found ourselves in the dark. The roar of the gale had steadily increased through the evening, the occasional squalls had become fiercer and more frequent, and now a real hurricane was raging round the swastika-palace and the tents; and our mats and blankets were flapping about our ears like storm-lashed sails. The heavy roof of the house creaked and groaned in all its joists, and our tents could scarcely stand against the tremendous force of the wind. Every attempt to light the lamp once more would have been vain, and considering the highly inflammable nature of our surroundings, extremely dangerous. There was nothing for it but to put an end to the interview, just as it began to grow interesting, and crawl into one’s tent, to bed.

Sleeping in Africa has its peculiar discomforts. First, the trough-like camp bed is less conducive to rest than the broad iron bedsteads of the coast; then, the fall in the temperature about an hour before sunrise awakens one and forces one to reach for another blanket; and, finally, the chorus of coughing always to be heard from a large caravan most effectually murders sleep! On the march from Lindi to Masasi, the whole troop of police had always camped for the night in a close circle round our tents, heads pointing outward; and in the bitterly cold nights at Nangoo and Chikugwe, there was such a coughing and spitting that one did not know which deserved most compassion, the unhappy wretches shivering outside, or ourselves. Here at Mwiti, I wanted to quarter both the escort and the carriers at a distance from my own tent; but the corporal in command of the dozen men assigned me in the former capacity by Ewerbeck, explained that it would not do, as the Wangoni were approaching. So I had once more to let them lay down their mats, and plant the poles on which to hang their guns and cartridge-belts, all round my tent, and could get no sleep for their coughing; but this time pity was stronger than irritation. There was only too much cause for the former: the small open space in front of Nakaam’s house, where we have pitched our tent, is almost treeless and quite unprotected against the icy wind from the heights. Each man builds a good fire beside his mat, but this does not avail to keep them warm in their thin khaki suits.

The native is certainly, an incomprehensible being. Next morning I called all the men together and told them to build themselves grass huts, or, if that was too much trouble, at least screens to protect them against the wind.—“Ndio, Bwana,” (“Yes, sir,”) answered the whole company; but when the afternoon came, and I inquired about their shelters, it came out that there were none. I was going on in a few days, it seemed, and so there was no object in building shelters. “Very good!” I replied coldly, “then you may just freeze. But those who come to me with colds, in the next few days,” I added to myself, “shall not be treated with anything pleasant, like aspirine, but with quinine; and they shall not have it in water, but dry; and I mean to make the rascals chew this beautiful strong dawa before my eyes.” Thus does Africa spoil the character and, unfortunately, not that of the natives only.

My second day at Mwiti was fraught with yet other instructive experiences. The fever, from which I have only just recovered, must still be hanging about me, for I felt a strange slackness, and quietly went to sleep during the forenoon in my long chair under Nakaam’s baraza. I was awakened by strange sounds, a smack and a howl alternately, and, glancing to the left, perceived that the fair-haired Nils, in his quality of interim sub-prefect, was dispensing justice like a second Solomon. I have been present at several trials since I first arrived at Lindi, but such an experience is always interesting; so I was on the spot in a moment. The delinquent had in the meantime, howling loudly, received his five blows in full tale, and now stood upright once more, rubbing the injured part with excusably mixed feelings, though still looking impudent enough. Being, according to the present custom of the country, somewhat disguised in drink, he had, in the course of his examination, gone so far as to address Knudsen by a particular name—apparently the nickname by which he was known to the natives behind his back. This could not be passed over: hence the execution. The native, it may be said, looks on this as a matter of course, and would be much astonished if any want of respect failed to meet with condign punishment on the spot. In fact, he would think us very slack, and quite unfit to be his masters.

The next case, of which likewise I only witnessed the conclusion, also had a touch of tragi-comedy. I saw Corporal Saleh hastening across the square with a piece of stout cocoa-nut rope, such as is used by carriers to tie up their loads, in his hand. Before I could look round he had seized a young man standing before Knudsen and bound his arms tightly behind his back. The culprit submitted quietly, but a deafening outburst of talk arose when Saleh, throwing the rope like a lasso, fastened the other end round the waist of a young woman standing by, who chiefly attracted my attention by the truly Hottentot development of her figure about the hips. I ventured to interrupt this remarkable scene by inquiring what was up.

“Just look at this other man,” said the modern Solomon, “He is the woman’s husband, and she has been living for months with the other, while he was away on a journey. And when he came back and found them together, the scoundrel bit him in the hand into the bargain.”

“Oh! and to reward this precious couple you are fastening them together?”

“Not exactly as a reward; but they must be sent down to Lindi for trial. He is sure to get a month or two on the chain-gang; and I have no other way of sending them down.”

I have seldom seen such delighted faces as those of the two delinquents as they were led away.

All day long I had seen one of my carriers lurking about my tent. In the afternoon he plucked up courage and approached, saying that he wanted dawa. “What for?” I asked, somewhat distantly. “For a wound.” I supposed that he had somehow hurt himself on the march, and sent for Stamburi, the soldier who is entrusted with the treatment of all cases I do not care to undertake myself. Stamburi had some little difficulty in getting rid of the crust of dirt which encrusted the wounded leg, but at last succeeded in laying bare an old ulcer on the shin, which had eaten down to the bone and was in a horrible condition. Indignantly I turned on Mr. Sigareti,—such is the dirty fellow’s name—and told him that he had cheated me; he was no porter, but a sick man who ought to be in hospital. This wound was not recent, but months old, and I should send him back to Lindi at the first opportunity. With quiet insolence he replied, “Lindi hapana, Bwana;” he had been engaged for six months, and should not dream of leaving any sooner. It was a very unpleasant predicament for me, ignorant as I was of the regulations bearing on the case. If I kept the man it was probable that he might become incapacitated, or even die on the road; if I sent him off into the bush, he was sure to be eaten by lions. In any case it is interesting to note the one-sided development of this honest fellow’s sense of justice—he insists on the letter of his bond, but only so far as it is to his own advantage. The whole black race may best be characterized by two little words, hapana (literally “there is not” or “it is not there,” but usually employed in the sense of “no”), and bado, “not yet.” At least ninety-nine out of every hundred questions are answered by one or other of these two expressions. “Have you done so and so?” or, “Where is such a thing?”—asks the European: the answer will be in the first case, “Bado,” and in the second, “Hapana.” I have before now suggested that all the Bantu idioms of East Africa might be comprehended under the collective designation of Kibado or Kihapana. At first one finds it rather amusing, especially if one notices the affected intonation of the “bado” but in the end the incessant repetition of these two words, never varied by a Ndio (“Yes,”) or “Nimekwisha” (“I have finished,”) becomes monotonous, and drives the long-suffering traveller to his kiboko.

Towards the evening of this same memorable day, about an hour before sunset, a small boy of eight or nine came up and offered for sale a number of small ornamental combs. The things were indeed beautifully made, the comb itself being composed of thin, rounded slips of wood, and the upper end covered with different-coloured pieces of straw, arranged in neat geometrical patterns. “Where are these things made?” I demanded of the little merchant. “Karibu sana” (“Very near”), was the prompt answer. “And who makes them?” “A fundi” (a master-workman), said the boy, evidently surprised at the ignorance of the white man, who might surely be expected to know that in this country everything is made by a fundi. The bargain was quickly concluded, and having as quickly exchanged my sun-helmet for a light felt hat, and told Kibwana (who ran up with unusual nimbleness) with some asperity to leave behind the gun which he had hastily snatched up, I started on my way through the forest. The little man hastened forward at a wonderful pace. Five, ten, fifteen minutes passed, and every time I asked whether we were not nearly there, came the deprecatory reply, “Karibu sana!” The fifteen minutes became forty and then sixty, and when the sun had already sunk behind the hills, we seemed to be no nearer the goal. All my questions produced evasive answers; sometimes a distant shamba was pointed out as the fundi’s abode, sometimes he was affirmed to be just in front of us.

At last, growing tired, I sprang on our fleet-footed little guide from behind, seizing him, in the absence of any other suitable point of attack, by the ears. A severe cross-examination, assisted by gentle reminders applied in the same quarter, elicited the fact that our destination was high up in the hills, and quite as far ahead as we had already come. This meant that I should not get there before seven, or perhaps eight, by which time it would be quite dark; and I was unarmed and had no prospect of shelter for the night. My enthusiasm for native arts and crafts not running to such a length as that, I pulled our guide’s ears once more, with a short explanation of European views on the subject of distance, dismissed him with a slight slap, and returned empty-handed. At that time I was filled with irritation at this inscrutable people and their ways; to-day, when I come to think of it, I am forced to acknowledge that things are really not so very different at home: one man thinks twenty miles a mere trifle, another finds half a mile quite enough for a day’s march. I have already noticed, however, that the native is accustomed to greater distances and bases his calculations on greater powers of walking than we.

Once more the lamp is flickering unsteadily under Nakaam’s baraza, which is better protected than yesterday, though the storm is out of all proportion more violent.

“So there are sixty millions of people in Ulaya?” asks Nakaam in astonishment. “Sixty millions! But what is a million? Is it elfu elfu elfu—a thousand times a thousand times a thousand?”

Heavens! think I—the fellow is going it! 1,000 × 1,000 × 1,000—that is a thousand millions. Sixty thousand millions of Germans! My poor country! Population statistics for ever! But shall I undeceive Nakaam? Certainly not—we have not so much prestige that we can afford to part with a jot. So I answer “Ndio, elfu elfu elfu” and let it go at that.

“And how many soldiers has the Sultani ya Ulaya, the German Emperor?”

Here I felt quite justified in sticking to the truth. “When we are not at war we have 600,000 askari, but in war-time we have six millions.”

Nakaam is not a man to be easily impressed, but as he silently made the calculation, “six times elfu elfu elfu” it was plain that we were rising in his estimation. However, he is not only of a critical turn of mind, but also knows something of recent history.

“Is it not true,” he asks, “that in the great war between the Russians and the Japanese, the Russians were beaten?” This fact I could not indeed deny, however much I might wish to do so; but I thought it advisable to add, in the same breath with my affirmative answer, that this defeat signified nothing to us, for we, the Wadachi, were much stronger than the Russians, the Japanese and the English all together. Nakaam certainly looked convinced, but whether he was genuinely so or not, who can tell?

In geography my boy Moritz headed the class till recently. I heard him giving his friends, and anyone else who cared to listen, long lectures on Ulaya and America. He spoke of Berlin, Hamburg and Leipzig and explained to an interested audience with inexhaustible patience what was the end and aim of his master’s being in distant Ulaya. I was the Bwana mkubwa, so he said, of a great—a very great house—in which were the mats and stools and pots and spoons and cocoa-nut graters of all the tribes in the world; and I had come into this country to get more of such things and take them to Ulaya. It must be acknowledged that Moritz gave a pretty fair interpretation of the end I had in view; but his fame was soon eclipsed when, a day or two before we left Masasi, Ali, the far-travelled, came up from Lindi, to enter Knudsen’s service once more. Moritz’s squeaky voice was now silenced, for Ali was able to relate what he had seen with his own eyes at Berlin and Hamburg, having once visited Germany with a former master. His only regret was that he did not know Leipzig.

Nakaam’s topographical knowledge was, like Moritz’s, of a purely theoretic nature, and it only went as far as Berlin. But what an intense interest this man took in every possible detail of a European town! He wanted to know the length of the streets, the height of the houses, and how one could ascend such towers as they seemed to be, and how many people lived in one house, where they cooked their food, and a hundred other things. For me, with my scanty Swahili vocabulary, it was, of course, quite impossible to satisfy this thirst for information to its fullest extent, and I was the more grateful to Knudsen for his help.

Next day we marched to a God-forsaken hole called Mkululu, not as yet marked on any map. The miserable huts here were a complete contrast to Nakaam’s house, and the village square and baraza were dirty and neglected. Both had to be thoroughly cleaned before we could have our tents pitched close to the rest-house. Yet we were compelled to be grateful to the fate which had instinctively as it were directed our steps to the shelter of its thatched roof. The gale which had spoilt our evenings at Mwiti arose here likewise, soon after sunset. It would have been absolutely impossible to remain out of doors with such a quantity of dust, leaves, grass and twigs whirling through the air. Even under the baraza it was unendurable, so there was nothing for it but to make for our tents and get into our warm beds. Alas! this adjective did not apply, and all efforts to get warm, even with the help of a second camel’s hair blanket, were vain. I shivered with cold and my teeth chattered so that at intervals they were audible above the roaring of the gale. This roaring became louder and more formidable every quarter of an hour, and, thinking that the chill I felt was merely due to the usual fall of temperature in the evening, I got up to make the tent a little more weather-tight. Though I did not even get outside, I was sincerely thankful to return to its shelter. The world outside was given up to a veritable witches’ sabbath. Howling, shrieking and whistling, the storm, carrying with it dense clouds of dust and rubbish, raged round my tent; and the moment I attempted to set foot out of doors the whirlwind seized me in its embrace. At the same time an incessant crashing of falling trees and breaking branches, some of them, to judge by the sound, of considerable size, went on all round us. I never closed an eye during this night: the cold fit soon yielded to a violent perspiration, and only the inexorable necessity of marching on got me out of bed in the early morning.

I should prefer to say nothing about the forced march from Mkululu to Chingulungulu, as I must have played but a sorry part that day in the eyes of our followers. Knudsen, too, was suffering from fever. In the early morning, while the air was still cool and the bush fresh and green, it was not so bad, though riding was out of the question. Our way now ran close under the western edge of the Makonde plateau, through an area of deep sedimentary deposits, and at the same time of numerous springs. Consequently, every few hundred yards, the caravan found itself on the edge of a deep ravine with almost vertical sides, excavated by a stream in the loose soil. With unsteady feet one stumbles down the steep declivity, and only succeeds in scrambling up the other side by straining every muscle and nerve in the fever-weakened body. After this has happened more than a dozen times, the guide turns off the path to the right and disappears in the bush. This now becomes more and more open the farther we leave the escarpment of the plateau behind us, and at last it is the typical “open tree and grass steppe:” every tree exactly like every other; fresh foliage only at intervals; underwood also rare, but thorny where it occurs; grass in most places already burnt off. Where this is the case, an impenetrable cloud of ashes, stirred up by local whirlwinds, and still more by the steps of our party, circles round us in the glowing heat of noon, covering everything with a thick layer of black dust. I have long ago dropped the reins on the mule’s neck, and he has twice, in his innate apathy and determination to keep a straight course, run into a thornbush, so that I had to let myself fall off him backwards, whether I liked it or not. At last the Yao chief Zuza’s stately house came into view, and a few minutes later we and our men lay panting in its shade.