From a height of 2,300 feet above sea-level at Newala we have descended to something under 200 feet, and instead of the usual noonday temperature of 76° or 77°, we are sweltering in the jungle at 97° or thereabouts, though in the immediate neighbourhood of our old friend the Rovuma. But I must proceed in chronological order, if my narrative is to be intelligible.

The early morning of October 11th was as misty, raw and cold as all its predecessors, yet to our perceptions it did not resemble them in the least. The spectacle of uproarious high spirits, which my men presented when we left Chingulungulu was here repeated if possible in an intensified form. Newala proved, in fact, anything but a Capua for these poor fellows. Even Pesa mbili II, formerly a fellow of generous proportions, has become quite slender. When I asked him yesterday, “Tumbo lako wapi?” (“Where is your stomach?”) he replied with a mournful glance at the place it had once occupied, “Tumbo limekwenda, Bwana” (“It has gone away, sir”). Knudsen and I, by the way, can say much the same, for our khaki suits hang quite loosely round our wasted limbs.

Mahuta is the only place at which I could think of pursuing my Makonde studies. It is not only the political centre of the hill country, and the residence of the highest Government official, the Wali, but is from a geographical point of view very favourably situated for my purposes, as roads lead from it in all directions, by which I can easily reach the various native tribes, or by which, this being in every way more convenient, the natives can come to me. But, in the meantime, another goal was beckoning—the Wangoni enclave on the southern edge of the plateau.

From the day of my leaving Lindi I have heard all sorts of statements as to these Wangoni, who of course are supposed to be akin to the Kafir tribes of that name on the eastern shore of Lake Nyasa. On one of the many raids in which these tribes, whether called Mazitu, Mafiti, Magwangwara, Wamachonde, or Wangoni, have more or less laid waste, the whole southern part of German East Africa, this division was separated from the main body by a gallant counter-attack of the Yaos under Matola I, and driven into the Nchichira district, on the southern edge of the Makonde plateau. Nils Knudsen had more information to give me than this; he described the Wangoni as splendid figures of warriors, in every respect immeasurably superior to their present neighbours, and even to his beloved Wayao. And if I wanted to see regular villages—rows of houses with fine streets between them,—he said, I must go to Nchichira. “So I will, but of course you must come, too,” was my answer. Honest Nils did not wait for a second invitation: the Rovuma and elephant-hunting are in his mind inseparably connected, and I think he would walk straight to the Congo without stopping, if anyone told him that a decent-sized tusker had been seen there. He is a good shot, too, in spite of the unwieldy old-fashioned guns—in a very shaky condition, moreover—which form his armoury.

I therefore determined on an excursion to Nchichira, to see something of the Wangoni, before going on to Mahuta, where I mean to spend some weeks in order to finish my inquiries. I feel already as if I had collected nearly all the information I am capable of assimilating at present, and that there is some danger of my receptive faculties failing me one of these days, amid the abundance of new impressions.

We passed Mahuta on our march from Newala to Nchichira—the easiest march yet experienced. Had I not bestridden my well-tried old mule, I could have wished for a bicycle; even a motor could have been driven quite comfortably along this road. No steep hills and no deeply eroded gorges, but a plain with a gentle and almost imperceptible eastward slope, covered throughout with dense bush, in which the industrious Makonde have here and there cleared their little patches for cultivation, and through which run broad, well-kept roads, sometimes perfectly straight for a kilometer at a time. The Makonde have certainly not made these roads out of any personal interest in improving their means of communication. In fact, considerable pressure from Lindi was needed before they could be got to accomplish the task; but, once finished, the roads—everywhere wide enough for a column, and sometimes for a section, to march abreast—are equal to every strategic requirement. The only thing calculated to diminish the pleasures of travel is the loose, deep sand, which, however, one is thankful to find does not occur everywhere, but only in the depressions, where it has been washed down from the higher parts of the road. In these spots it seems all but bottomless.

But the men’s delight in change and movement would conquer greater difficulties than this trifle. The bush is green, the sun has just dispelled the mists, and now shines down victoriously on black and white alike with such cheerfulness that the carriers cannot help singing. So they strike up their fine old Nyamwezi songs which have so often helped us over the small unpleasantnesses of the march, and also some newly-composed ones, which, heard to-day for the first time, are still more pleasing than the old répertoire.

There is only one settlement of any size on the road between Newala and Mahuta. This is the village presided over by Henderera, an old club-footed Makonde headman. His ugliness seems to have impressed even my carriers; at least one of them, a few days later, brought me a sketch-book, in which the old man was most faithfully portrayed. Henderera’s village is laid out on a surprisingly large scale; the open space round which the huts are grouped is large enough for a company of German soldiers to exercise in, and my scant dozen warriors make a very poor show in it.

The boma of Mahuta is conspicuous at a great distance by its palisade and an unusually large drill-ground. In fact, all trees and bushes have been cleared away to a distance of at least a couple of hundred yards all round the fort. In front of the main entrance—a small gateway scarcely wide enough for one man to pass—I see the Wali’s whole force drawn up; five baharia, black fellows in khaki sailor-suits, who are making convulsive efforts to get into tolerable alignment. The Wali is not visible; he is at the coast, I am told. The commanding officer is just bellowing “Present arms!” when I am unkind enough to leave the road to the boma and turn to the right. A few hundred yards on one side of the boma, and behind it, I see the house which was long ago named in my honour and in which it is surely my bounden duty to take up my quarters. This is a building which Mr. Ewerbeck, in anticipation of our working together at Mahuta, caused to be erected for our common use some months ago. The architect was punctually at hand on the day fixed for the house-warming, but his guest had been grappled with hooks of steel by the ethnological interests of Chingulungulu. Half in sadness, half in vexation, Ewerbeck moved in by himself, bestowed on the house the sign of “The Professor who Never Came,” and, finally, took his own departure. Scarcely had the five sailors become aware of my intention before they were off like lightning. I rode after them at a round trot, but nevertheless the “Ready! Present arms! Eyes left!” came quite in time. I must say they are smart at their drill, these black lads!

The house at the sign of “The Professor who Never Came” has a magnificent situation. From its verandah, or from the steps leading to it, we look into a deep ravine yawning immediately at our feet. On both sides is a splendid forest of large timber trees—the Makonde avoid steep slopes in their destructive system of farming—and, in the far distance behind the spot where the ravine (which must be some twelve miles long) is closed in by two projecting spurs of the plateau, we see a pale grey strip with a silver streak in it. That is the Rovuma. Behind it again is a shining mirror—the Lidede Lake,^[66] and behind that, in dark, dull-green contours, the level of the Mavia plateau. After the monotony of the Makonde Highlands, the scenery of Mahuta is indeed refreshing.

We continued our march on the following day. Hour after hour, the long-drawn-out line of the caravan wound its way between the green walls of the bush. The aspect of the latter had now undergone a change. It was not so high, and the place of the terrible thorns was taken by a perfect exuberance of plant-forms reminding me of our box-thorn (Lycium barbarum). As the sun rose higher, the heat in the narrow pass now forming the road became more stifling, and the sand of the soil finer and deeper. At last we reached Nchichira, which, like Masasi, Newala and Mahuta, possesses a boma—a square enclosure of about 100 yards to a side, surrounded by a palisade of stout logs. This contains the dwellings of the Akida and the other officials of a subordinate German administrative centre. In the months which have passed since we left Lindi, my men have become thoroughly proficient in pitching and breaking camp. One, two, three, and my tent is in place—and in an equally short time we have installed ourselves under the low baraza. It is no more comfortable than our previous abodes, but I prefer a strong thatched roof to the necessity of living in the hot tent, or to a freshly-built banda with its abundance of all sorts of vermin. In such structures insects incessantly rain down from the newly-cut grass on one’s head and body, and into all the plates and dishes.

The twelve days at Nchichira passed like a dream. Not that I really did any dreaming: the excessive amount of work awaiting me there prevented that. Just because I have not yet attained a clear consciousness of the impressions received—have, so to speak, not digested the abundant repast set before me—the whole time of my stay seems, on looking back, like a confused reverie. I shall not attempt to describe its details here, but only to note the most striking points.

I can find no trace of the heroic qualities alleged to be possessed by the Wangoni. These fellows do not seem to differ much, physically or mentally, from the other tribes in this region; in fact, to confess the honest truth, their physique is somewhat inferior. Moreover, many of them are diseased. I was confronted with a ghastly sight one day, when following a strange track in the sand which I took to be that of a python, I went round to the back of a hut and found seated there a living skeleton—a man without a vestige of flesh or muscle on his whole body. He had been dragged along in a sitting posture by a compassionate small boy, thus producing the track I had noticed. This disease is called ububa.

The only really tall man is old Makachu, the headman of the neighbouring village, and at the same time the chief of one of the two clans into which the Wangoni living here are divided. I measured Makachu and found his height to be a fraction under six feet. If this stature makes him look like Saul among his people, it is obvious how very poorly developed the rest of them must be. Indeed the old men of the tribe, as they drag themselves up to the baraza to talk to me, seem quite emaciated with chronic underfeeding; and the rising generation does not promise much better. “No—these are no Zulus,” I said to myself on first seeing them; and I have since found this conclusion confirmed by all sorts of proofs.

In the first place, there is not a single South African touch in the arrangement and construction of their huts. The widely-scattered villages, through which we have marched for the last few hours of the road from Mahuta, are exactly like the villages in the plains west of the plateau. The only difference is that the fields here appear to be better kept, and to have been better cleared and broken up, to begin with. But then it is one thing to clear ground in a large timber forest, and another to burn off the sort of bush that grows up in these parts. The details of hut-construction, too, are exactly the same, and the interiors just as wildly untidy, and furnished with the same sort of grain-stores, pots and bark boxes, the same bedsteads and the same smouldering log on the hearth as at Mchauru or Akundonde’s; while the outer walls are daubed over with the same sort of childish paintings found elsewhere in the country.

But let us consider the language and history of this group of people. Among my carriers we have in the person of Mambo sasa a genuine Zulu, a Mngoni from Runsewe. These Wangoni are the descendants of that wave of Zulus which penetrated furthest north. While the main body of the warriors who, three quarters of a century ago, crossed the Zambezi,^[67] settled on both shores of Nyasa, and founded kingdoms there, amid sanguinary struggles, these Wangoni kept on northward along the eastern shore of Tanganyika, till their advance, too, was checked in north-western Unyamwezi. Under the name of Watuta, the descendants of these first conquerors continued their predatory career for some decades, till Captain Langheld, in the nineties, settled them in the bush at Runsewe where they now live. “Now, Mambo sasa, you can go ahead and interpret!” I remarked to my merry friend, when the Wangoni made their appearance. I have already more than once mentioned Mambo; he is jester-in-ordinary to the whole company; his voice, though not melodious, is powerful and untiring, and his improvised ditties never cease during the day, whether on the march or in camp. With the Wangoni of Nchichira confronting the Mngoni from Runsewe, I prepared to take notes in my usual way. Mambo, when I had made sure that he understood my first question, repeated it in his mother tongue—but there was no answer; the men simply stared at him in bewilderment. Repeated experiments led to the same result; it was abundantly clear that the alleged fellow-tribesmen could not understand one another’s speech. Subsequently I questioned both parties separately, and noted down as much of their respective languages as the incredible and equal stupidity of the good Mambo sasa and the Nchichira elders would allow. So far as I have been able to get a connected view of the result, my supposition is confirmed; the Wangoni of this district have nothing beyond the name in common with those in the hill country near Songea. They are just such a congeries of broken tribes as we find elsewhere in the south of our colony.

A clear proof that I am right in the above opinion was afforded me when talking over the history of the tribe. After the giant Makachu, my principal informant is old Majaliwa, within the area of whose village the boma is built, and whose guests, in a manner of speaking, we therefore are. He is also the chief of the second clan previously mentioned. The younger and more “educated” element is represented by Saidi, the teacher at Nkundi, who arrived to act as interpreter in response to my urgent appeal for his help. The people here are, after all, too primitive for anything. Half-a-dozen other men, mostly elderly, who seem more concerned with expectorating all over my baraza than with adding to my knowledge of their tribal history, serve to fill up the background behind the above three worthies.

In the first place Majaliwa and Makachu enlighten me as to their respective families. The former belongs to the lukohu (= lukosyo) of the Makale, the latter to that of the Wakwama. Makachu, the effect of whose fine stature is somewhat spoilt by very high shoulders, between which his head appears quite sunk, then, uninvited, begins to relate how he was born near the Lukimwa River, but his people were driven thence to the Mluhezi when he was a boy. Quite mechanically, at the word boy, the old man, as he sits on the ground, raises his arm to a horizontal position, and as mechanically his hand rises so as to make a right angle with his arm. It was the Wangoni, he goes on, who drove them away.

“The Wangoni?” I ask in astonishment, “but you are a Mngoni yourself!”

“Yes, but it was the Wangoni, all the same.”

I thought it best for the moment not to confuse the old man, so made no further remark, and he went on: “When my beard was just beginning to grow”—Makachu’s short beard is now quite white—“the Wangoni came again, but that time they were as many as the locusts, and we were driven away as far as Namagone’s.”

I always, of course, have my only and highly-prized map handy, and a glance at it shows me that such a chief as Namagone really exists, and that his village is on the right bank of the Rovuma, in 38° 26′ E. longitude, so that one troop of these Wangoni must at some time or other during their retreat have got as far east as this. This was confirmed by several other men sitting by. Kambale says that he, too, was at Namagone’s when a boy, and Liambaku, a younger brother of Majaliwa’s, states that he was born at the Lukimwa.

Makachu is just about to continue his narrative when Majaliwa, the senior of those present, opens his withered mouth, with its worn-down stumps of teeth, to say: “From the Lukimwa we went to Kandulu’s, the Yao chief; the Wangoni drove us away from there; first we went to Namagone’s, and then to Makachu’s, where we remained a year. But the Wangoni came again and drove us out once more, and we came to Nchichira. But even here they have attacked us once, and that was at the time when you Wadachi (Germans) built your boma at Lindi.”

No one else offers to speak, so that I can put in a word in my turn.

“You have so much to say of the evil the Wangoni have done you, but are they not your brothers?”

Lively gesticulation all round the circle. “No,” is the unanimous answer, “they are our worst enemies.”

“But surely you can understand and speak their language?” Again a most decided negative. Further cross-questioning elicited the following explanation:—

“We people of Nchichira call ourselves Wangoni, but we call the people from Songea Mafiti. They came from a far country long ago, but we do not know what country they came from. Our fathers always lived on the Lukimwa, and if it were not that the evil Mafiti had raided us so often, we should be living there still. We are no kin to the Wamatambwe, but we are good friends with the Wayao; our fathers always took refuge with them in time of war.”

A detailed study of the Wangoni at Nchichira thus shows that, as already stated, they are a conglomerate of all possible elements, who during the long Mafiti troubles fled to this remote corner and became amalgamated into a sort of tribal unit of their own. How much they resemble—or try to resemble—the Yaos, nothing shows more clearly than the fact that almost all the women wear the kipini or nose-stud; the pelele is quite a rarity among them. Though disappointed of the new and strange traits I had hoped to meet with, had the Wangoni proved to be true Zulus, I cannot help feeling a certain pride in correcting the old mistaken view of these people which is even now current on the coast: yet I cannot deny that the discovery made me less unwilling to leave Nchichira than I should otherwise have been.

Knudsen has been spending the whole time which I have devoted to my inquiries among the Wangoni elders, hunting in the alluvial valley of the Rovuma, with its rich variety of high, dense forest, tangled scrub, and open, meadow-like glades. I often thought I could hear his gun, so close under the boma of Nchichira do these hunting-grounds lie, and, more than once, standing on the plateau, I have fancied my eye could follow his stooping figure as he advanced quickly and yet cautiously along the bottom of the valley.

The one evening walk possible at Nchichira is very short, but reveals almost an excess of beauty. The sun has just set behind the distant Nyasa, and, quite exhausted, I lay aside pencil and note-book, light a fresh cigar (we have had in a supply by this time, not derived from the Indian’s store at Lindi, but genuine Leipzig ones), beckon my camera-bearers to follow, and leave the boma at a good round pace. We walk along the palisade till it comes to an end, and then we have reached the goal; the Rovuma Valley in all its glory is lying immediately at my feet. It is no easy task to depict a sunset in words, and here, where to the peculiar character of the country, with its remarkable contrasts between the highest degree of erosion and the greatest amount of alluvial accumulation is added an indescribable richness of colour in the evening sky, the pen fails—if only because in the presence of such beauty it is impossible for a person of any feeling to put his impressions on paper. If I could photograph in colours what a picture I should have! But as I am confined to the use of common, or at most orthochromatic plates, I shall have to do the best I can with my note-book, after reaching home, to give some idea of the glory I have been witnessing.

The plateau, here, at the centre of its southern edge, is much lower than at Newala; it may be estimated at from 1,300 to 1,500 feet. And yet the valley of the Rovuma, with a breadth of from six to nine miles and a height above sea-level, at its lowest point, of barely 200 feet, makes the impression of a vast eroded ravine. Its two edges are absolutely similar, and it must be clear to any child that the Mavia plateau on the other side and the Makonde highlands on this are of the same age and have the same origin. The Rovuma, working downward like a saw, has gradually excavated this cañon across the old tableland. Now at the end of the dry season, the river looks more poverty-stricken than ever—a scanty thread of water trickling along a bed over half-a-mile wide, filled with enormous banks of gravel and sand. The river in flood must be a grand sight, but to-day the prevailing note of the scenery is gentle and cheerful. A whole series of terraces marking different flood-levels are visible to the naked eye below us, while similar ones can be made out with a field-glass on the Portuguese side of the river. The grey strip with the shining silver thread in it looks near enough to be touched by the hand, yet Knudsen says it is a good two hours’ walk to the river-bank—so deceptive is the wonderfully clear air. It is true that here, too, there are clouds of smoke rising to the sky—they are at times particularly dense and frequent on the other side of the valley, between the river and the Nangadi Lake. I am almost tempted to think that the Mavia want to smoke out the unlucky Portuguese who is probably meditating in his boma—easily distinguishable with the glass—on the reason why he has been condemned to pass his life here: so numerous are the concentric zones of fire which seem to surround his lonely abode. To our right the grey bed of the river with its green margins stretches away westward till it is lost in the distance. The Lidede Lake is by no means near, yet it, too, by an effect of perspective, seems to lie at our feet, so far can I look beyond it into the interior of the continent. And over all this the western and southern horizon glows in a thousand brilliant tints. It almost seems as if the sun, for love of so much beauty, were departing less quickly than he usually does between the tropics; the sunset hues pale and fade away only very gradually. It was with difficulty that I could tear myself away from this picture in order to take one or two photographs of it with my smallest stop, while my dark friends stood behind me in silence, evidently as much impressed as their master. At first the darkness came on by slow degrees, but after a while the shadows, growing deeper and deeper, descended more quickly over Lidede and Nangadi; then the first sombre tones touched the meadows and the green forest, and only the light grey of the river bed showed up for a while amid the gathering darkness. I am a very prosaic person, on the whole; but I am quite willing to admit that a single sunset like this would have amply repaid me for the march to Nchichira, even had I found no Wangoni living there.

In this valley, then, Nils Knudsen has been pursuing the pleasures of the chase. At any time, the first chance native who comes to him with the remark, “Master, there are elephants down there,” is enough to send him off in ten minutes at the best pace of which his rolling seaman’s gait will permit. He is sensible enough, however, to trust no longer to his ancient blunderbusses, but has asked me for the loan of one of my rifles.

One afternoon, I am sitting as usual with my native tutors. Our Kingoni studies are not progressing very satisfactorily. If I direct the intelligent Saidi to translate, “Your father is dead,” I infallibly get a sentence which, when afterwards checked, turns out to mean, “My father is dead.” If I want him to tell me the Kingoni for “My father is dead,” he translates (quite correctly from his point of view), “Your father,” etc., etc. I am now so far used to these little jokes that they no longer excite me, but a worse difficulty lies in ascertaining the forms of the personal pronouns: “I, thou,” etc. They caused me no end of trouble even at Newala, where my teachers were by no means stupid. Here, whatever I do, I cannot succeed in getting the third person singular and plural. I have arrived at the first and second, of course, by the rule of contraries; for, if I say “I,” involuntarily pointing to myself, I am sure to get the word for “you,” and vice versa. Resigning myself to disappointment, I am just about to light a cigar to soothe my nerves, when I become aware of a perceptible excitement all round me. At a rate compared with which Pheidippides must have come from Marathon at a snail’s pace, one of Knudsen’s boys arrives, spluttering out something which I cannot understand. My men are all assembled in no time, and from them and the inhabitants of the boma I hear the news of Knudsen’s success in bringing down a large elephant. Its tusks are “so big”—the fellows stretch out their, long, gibbon-like arms to show their girth—and as for meat...! I could see how their mouths were watering at the thought.

That day and the next were entirely dominated by the slain elephant. The men kept bringing in veritable mountains of meat, and the whole countryside smelt anything but agreeably of African cooking. Then arrived the four feet, then the tusks, and last of all the successful hunter himself. His triumph, however, was somewhat damped by the fact that the tusks were small in proportion to the size of the animal, weighing, by our reckoning, certainly not over forty pounds. To make up for this, he brought me another piece of news, to my mind much more welcome; the people in the valley had houses of a style totally different from anything to be seen up here—in fact, constructions of several stories. Nils was obliged to asseverate this in the most solemn way before I would believe him; but once convinced of his bona fides, I could not stay another day on the plateau. Early the very next morning, we were clambering like monkeys down its bordering cliffs into the river-valley.

For the last few days we have been encamped here close to the left bank of the main river, in the scanty shade of stunted trees, surrounded by a tangle of reeds and tall grass, in which our people with some trouble cleared a place for the tents. At this spot there is an extensive view both up and down stream, and, for a wonder, this reach is free from the islands which elsewhere obstruct the channel, so that the eye can range unhindered across a sea of sand-banks to the further shore. The steep, eroded banks whose acquaintance we made on the central course of the river are here, too, the rule. Sitting at the top of one of these steep slopes, it requires some skill to hit the hippos which from time to time unexpectedly rise in the river; even Nils, usually a dead shot, misses time after time, to his great disgust. These slopes are the only picturesque point in the vast desolation of the river-bed where nothing is to be seen except sand and gravel, gravel and sand. Between these great masses of drift, the Rovuma is still more broken up into small streams than is the case higher up at the mouth of the Bangala, and the wandering Wamatambwe, here more numerous than on the upper river, have no need to exercise their famous powers of swimming and diving, but can wade at their ease across the shallow channels.

This is rather unfortunate for Knudsen, as it deprives him of an opportunity to prove the truth of a story he is never tired of telling me about the Wamatambwe. Not content with saying that they are excellent swimmers, and not afraid of crocodiles, partly because of their faith in the charms with which they are always provided and partly because they are much more agile in the water than the reptiles—he insists that they cross the river at its highest level, when the current is too strong to launch their canoes, by simply walking through, though the water is far above their heads. Though unable, in face of his superior knowledge, to disprove this assertion, I find it somewhat difficult to believe.

The state of the river, as I have already remarked, will not allow them to show off their diving at present, and as regards their trust in the dawa for protection against crocodiles, my own observation does not bear out what he tells me. At least, I see that the Wamatambwe whom he sends across the channel at our feet, in order to pick up the numerous ducks shot by him, always look about them uneasily when they chance upon a deeper spot and make the best of their way to shore.

But this is not the purpose for which I came down to the Rovuma, and I may give myself credit for devoting to the river only the afternoons of my scanty leisure. Every forenoon is occupied with the discovery as to which Knudsen was so enthusiastic. This time, for once, he was right; but, as the simplest photograph tells more than the fullest description, I refer the reader to the accompanying illustrations and only give such additional comments as are absolutely necessary to make them comprehensible.

Our departure from Nchichira was slightly delayed by a warm shower, falling in straight, vertical lines on the dry sand. Both nature and man drew a long breath at this first symptom of the approaching rains. But the pitiless sun reasserted his rights only too quickly, and the procession started on its way, soon vanishing down the precipitous slope. After descending a few yards, the steep path ceased to be slippery; hot, dry stones crunched under our feet—the atmosphere, too, into which every step plunged us another fraction of a yard deeper, was likewise hot and dry; it became evident that the rain must here have evaporated before it reached the ground. At last we arrived at the bottom and entered a dense forest of huge trees. But even here we did not find the pleasant coolness of our German forests; the air we encountered was hot, moist and mouldy-smelling, and the foot had to feel its way uncertainly over the quaking soil.

“If the Department of Woods and Forests only knew—there is plenty of timber to be had here!” I was just saying to myself, when we suddenly came to the end of it. It looked as though a hurricane had passed, or an avalanche ploughed its way down the neighbouring precipice. The mighty boles lay like broken matches, across one another in all directions; a lamentable sight indeed to an economical European eye. With great difficulty we scrambled on; the ground became drier; here and there we stepped into heaps of ashes, and then a glance round revealed the true state of the case. Even here, it is man who will not leave nature in peace. The Makonde plateau, with its area of 6,000 square miles, might surely be expected to afford subsistence for a mere trifle of 80,000 or 90,000 natives with their simple wants. As a matter of fact, however, we see that it is not sufficient for them. In this case the underwood had been cut down and burnt over a considerable distance, and the large trees had been attacked, as usual, with axe and fire. Everywhere fallen logs still smouldered, and the vanished shapes of splendid trees were traced on the ground in outlines of white ashes. While I was still gazing in horror at the work of destruction, my men brought forward one of the criminals—no other than old Majaliwa himself. He had his axe still in his hand, and was grinning all over with pride at his achievements.

German East Africa has no superfluity of real, commercially valuable timber; the famous Shume forest in Usambara and a few others (remarkable on account of their rarity) are but the exceptions proving the rule. The necessity, therefore, of protecting the hitherto untouched forest areas on the Rovuma from the wasteful farming of the natives is all the more urgent. We have a well-founded right to prohibit the tribes living in the neighbourhood of this valley from cutting down a single tree in it, since it is solely in consequence of the security afforded by the German administration that they are able to cultivate any new ground at all outside their hereditary seats on the plateau. If the boma of Nchichira had not been planted on the top of the escarpment, bidding defiance to the Mavia across the valley, no Mngoni or Makonde would dream of sowing a single grain of maize beyond the edge of the tableland. So to-day, knowing that, under our protection, they are quite safe from Mavia raids, even in the valley, they go down and destroy our finest forests.

A little farther on, having reached the top of an undulation in the soil, we at last came to the wonder we were in search of—two specimens at once. With astonishment I found myself before a regular tower, and saw my men staring uncomprehendingly at a style of architecture quite new to them. Majaliwa’s new palace—it was here then, that the old man retired every day after our shauri was over—is not, indeed, as Nils Knudsen had asserted, a three-storied house, but, with a little goodwill we can easily make out two stories and an attic. The ground floor is a square apartment with grass walls, filled with pots, calabashes, ladles and the rest of a native woman’s household requisites, and having the usual fire smouldering between the three lumps of earth in the centre. The first floor is much more elegantly appointed, only the access to it is less convenient than might be wished. My early training in gymnastics enables me to negotiate without difficulty the primitive ladder, consisting of cross-pieces lashed to the supporting piles at intervals of about a yard; but they give Knudsen a good deal of trouble, and how old Majaliwa and his wife get up it every night, like chickens going to roost, is beyond my comprehension. Their sleeping apartment is quite comfortable—a thick layer of straw covers the logs of the floor, and the mats which make up the bedding are of a quality by no means to be despised. As the matriarchate is not in force among the Wangoni, no rule of propriety is violated by the fact that Abdallah, the heir to the house, lives in the attic. This, too, is, for a native dwelling, very neatly arranged, with its soft bed, mats and baskets of provisions.

Such was my first sight of the pile-dwellings of this region. It was followed by more extensive studies, but the main features of these constructions are everywhere the same. My first notion as to the reason for this mode of building was that it had been adopted to escape the mosquitoes in the neighbourhood of the river, and also for safety in time of flood. Some of these huts, in fact, are within reach of the inundations during the wet season; but the majority are placed on the top of ridges well beyond high-water mark. If we ask the natives why they build their huts in this particular way, the answer is always the same—“Pembe” (“Elephants”). I was at first unwilling to believe this, the elephant being an extremely shy animal, who, under all circumstances, avoids the vicinity of man; but I was informed that the local representatives of the species are of a somewhat different disposition from their congeners elsewhere. Only a few days before, one of these monsters had, quite unprovoked, seized a Mngoni going peaceably about his business, and tossed him into the air. In the light of these facts, the strong palisade surrounding many of these high structures cannot be considered an unnecessary precaution. In any case the discovery of this pile-dwelling district within easy reach of the coast was almost as pleasant a surprise as my success in establishing the tribal divisions at Newala.

The heat here certainly makes us wish ourselves back in the comparatively low temperature of that place. It is impossible to remain even a minute in the tent during the daytime, the thermometer there standing at over 104°, while even under our banda (a hastily erected grass shelter), we are sitting perspiring at 98° and 99°. The evening gale which was the terror of our lives at Newala is here entirely absent, but, on the other hand, we are tormented by a legion of mosquitoes, from which we can only escape by retiring under our nettings soon after sunset.

“Have you anything more on your mind?” I have just asked the indefatigable Knudsen, who seems quite worn out. “I mean,” I add, seeing that he does not at once understand, “have you any more ethnographical curiosities in reserve?”

“Not that I know of,” is his answer.

“Well, then, let us march again to-day, as far as the boma of Nchichira, and to-morrow morning at 4.45 we will leave for Mahuta.”

“Let us do so at once, by all means!” replies Knudsen, and goes into his tent to change his soaking khaki suit.