With all respect to my camp bed, I find that I can sleep much more comfortably on the couch provided here by the Imperial District Commissioner, with its three-foot-six mattress and spacious mosquito-net: luxuries which I have been enjoying for the last week, having marched into Lindi with flying colours on November 17th, after a toilsome and difficult journey.

The outward aspect of the little town is much the same as when I left it in July, but the European population has changed to a surprising degree. Hardly any of the old residents are left, but the number of new arrivals from Germany is so great that there is some difficulty in getting lodgings. If we were in an English colony, I should say that there is just now a boom at Lindi; as it is, we may say that capital has discovered the southern districts and is setting about their economic exploitation. It is said that all the good land in the neighbourhood of Lindi is already taken up, and later comers will perforce have to put up with more distant estates. While personally delighted to hear that the southern province, which has become very dear to me in the course of my stay, is thus prospering, I am too much occupied with my own affairs to have any further concern in these transactions.

First came the paying off of the numerous extra carriers whom I had been obliged to hire for the transport of the collections made at Mahuta. The amount paid out was not great, as the recipients had not been called upon to perform an excessive amount of work. All over the Makonde plateau I found that the carriers who arrived in time for the start on any given day, marched with the caravan as far as that night’s halting-place, but as regularly disappeared before the next morning, in spite of the sentries posted all round our camp. This unreliability caused me much vexation and loss of temper, besides the waste of time in engaging fresh men; but, on the other hand, I saved, in every such case, the day’s wages, which these deserters never gave me the chance of paying them. After passing the Kiheru valley and getting into the Yao country we had no more trouble, the men there being quite willing to go as far as the coast.

My Wanyamwezi carriers have already left for the north. On the 23rd I saw them on board the steamer, a much larger and finer boat than the Rufiji in which they suffered such misery on the down trip. Probably they are indulging in happy dreams of a speedy return to their far inland homes, and of the way in which they mean to lay out the capital knotted into their waistcloths; but in reality they will probably, on the day after landing, find themselves starting on a fresh expedition with the “chop-boxes” of some other white man on their heads. At this time, just before the rains, carriers are very scarce, and they are sure to be seized on at once. I am thus dependent for packing my collections—the cases previously sent down to the coast having been stored in the cellars of the Government offices, where they have remained undisturbed except by the innumerable rats—on myself and my remaining men. Among these, for the time being, I can still reckon Knudsen, who lends a hand right willingly, in spite of his melancholy looks. He does not like the coast; he says the damp climate is too soft for him, and he cannot get on with the white men. He is better accustomed to the washenzi in the bush, who neither worry him nor look down on him. He is only waiting till I have left for the north, before going west once more after antelope and elephant.

“Why, I thought you had had enough of that sort of thing,” was my well-meant remark, as I glanced at his right arm, of which, he says, he has not yet recovered the full use. It is a terrible story.

I was sitting at dinner one afternoon, trying to eat some mysterious compound out of a Portuguese tin, which proved on examination to be bacon and beans (probably a part of the stores originally laid in for Vasco da Gama’s expedition), when I heard Moritz’s nasal voice announcing, “Bwana mdogo anakuja” (“Mr. Knudsen is coming”). I turned round and saw him dragging himself along with uncertain steps; he was covered with dust, his clothes were torn, and his right arm in a sling.

“Well, old Nimrod, has the elephant tusked you?” I called out to him, not taking matters very seriously.

“Not that. I only fell and broke my arm—but my poor Wanduwandu is dead. He died just now;—here they come with him.”

In fact at this moment I saw a group of men busy over something at the narrow door of the boma; but the crowd was too great to see what it was. My first care was to attend to Knudsen’s arm, which was badly swollen, though I could discover no indication of a fracture. The only thing to be done, therefore, was to apply cold water bandages and support the arm in as easy a position as possible. Knudsen dropped into his chair like a log and sank into gloomy thought, while I went to look at the corpse. It was laid out on a kitanda or native bedstead, under a shady tree at the other end of the boma, and scantily covered with a cloth; the mouth was open, the glassy eyes staring vacantly. Hemedi Maranga came up and closed them, while I examined the injuries. I could find no serious wound; the tips of the fingers were crushed and bleeding, and the skin slightly grazed on the left temple, which also showed a moderate-sized swelling, but that was all. Notwithstanding this, the Wali and I agreed that the swelling must indicate the cause of death, and on feeling the head, we found that the skull was broken. The man must have received a terrible blow, but a blow with some soft object, otherwise the outside of the head would have been shattered.

The afternoon brought plenty of work. The dead man was sewn up in a piece of the sanda I had, in accordance with custom, brought with me, never dreaming that I should have to apply it to its traditional use. The grave was dug outside the boma just beyond the crest of the hill. I had fixed the time of the funeral at sunset; but about three I found that Wanduwandu’s friends and relations, thinking this too long to wait, had carried off the corpse in order to proceed with the obsequies on their own account; so that I had to send off my fleetest runner with orders to have it brought back again. At six my whole troop was drawn up on funeral parade. Here, too, I noticed the instinctive tact of the native; every man was in full-dress uniform, though I had given no orders to that effect, and Hemedi Maranga was wearing his medal. Of all the natives with whom I have come in contact, Wanduwandu attracted me most; he was a splendid figure of a man, the only one I ever saw who exemplified the “Herculean build” one so often hears of. At the same time he was quiet, dignified, and yet fully conscious of his strength. He had accompanied the expedition for some months, liked by all and hated by none. I felt it quite a matter of course that I should put on a clean white suit to convoy him on his last journey, though he was “only” a native.

I had already seen and photographed a number of Yao graves, but, apart from human sympathy, I was naturally interested in witnessing a native funeral, and therefore did not attempt to interfere in the least with the people’s arrangements. The grave had been dug of the same shape as in Europe, but much shallower, being not much over a yard in depth; and the men had also made it much too short. Two of the bystanders at once came forward to lengthen it, while the corpse was waiting to be lowered; but not altogether successfully, for if in future times any excavations are undertaken on that spot a skeleton will be found lying on its side, with the knees drawn up in a squatting position.^[70] Mats were spread over the body to prevent its coming in contact with the bare earth, which the native likes to avoid, even in death. Now, however, comes an exotic touch. Daudi, the native pastor from Chingulungulu, had been with us for some days, having been sent for by me, that I might talk over some points in my notes with him. Wanduwandu had remained a heathen; in fact, when Knudsen and I, as we often did, asked him, teasingly, whether he would not rather become a Muslim, or even a Christian, he always shook his head with a calm air of superiority, and said that what was good enough for his fathers was good enough for him. Nevertheless, Daudi was in attendance at the grave, and now spoke a few words in Swahili, in which I clearly distinguished, “Udongo kwa udongo, majivu kwa majivu” (“Earth to earth, ashes to ashes”). A few boys—I had not previously known that there were any Christians at Mahuta—then sang a short hymn in hushed, grave voices, as the sun sank glowing in the west; Daudi softly uttered a prayer, and the first shovelfuls of yellow sand fell with a dull sound on the wrappings of the corpse. My soldiers marched away in precise order, the rest of the crowd followed, laughing and joking. Death? What more is there to say about it? It may happen any day; that cannot be helped. Kismet!

To-day, the visitor to Mahuta will find on the spot referred to, a plain, low, but well-built structure—a thatched roof supported on posts, and looking accurately east and west, with pieces of coloured calico fluttering in the breeze from its ridge-pole. This marks Wanduwandu’s grave.

But it was only after the funeral was over that Nils Knudsen’s mourning really began. In his speculative way, he has been brooding over the cause of death. It was directly caused—there can be no doubt about that—by the elephant, a huge, solitary brute—a “rogue,” in fact. Knudsen first fired a couple of shots at him, and then his followers, people from the Nkundi plain, poured a whole volley from their muzzle-loaders on the unlucky beast. The elephant sank on his knees, but pulled himself up again with his trunk, and charged the hunters. All at once made for the rendezvous agreed on, but Knudsen fell while running, spraining his arm and losing his gun, which was flung into the bushes by the shock of his fall. When, after some time, they missed Wanduwandu, Knudsen returned to the scene of the encounter and heard a low groaning. He thought at first that it proceeded from the wounded elephant, but soon found his faithful follower lying senseless under a heap of branches. Knudsen did not notice whether the elephant’s tracks passed close to this spot or not, and indeed even now he does not clearly recollect the details of the tragedy. It may be assumed with tolerable certainty that Wanduwandu, who had the reputation of a brave, even a rash hunter, crossed the track of the infuriated animal and was struck down. The blood spoor of the elephant was lost in the bush.

This, then, is the direct cause of death, and for matter-of-fact Europeans it would be quite enough, but in this country it is otherwise. “It is that confounded fat woman’s fault; she deceived him once before, and I expect she has been at the same games again.” Such is the conclusion arrived at by Nils, who has quite fallen into native ways of thinking. My researches at Chingulungulu had revealed to me the universality of the belief that if a man’s wife is unfaithful to him while he is hunting elephants in the bush, he will be sure to meet with a fatal accident. I was told of a number of cases which had actually happened, and even the names of the people concerned. Wanduwandu’s wife is a buxom woman who, according to native ideas, is strikingly handsome—rotundity and beauty being equivalent terms in this country—and wears a nose-pin of unusual size and beautifully inlaid. It is therefore quite natural that she should be much admired, and, taking this circumstance in connection with her husband’s violent death, for these African intellects, and for Nils Knudsen as well, the logical inference is that, because the man has been killed his wife must have betrayed him.

It will be understood that I was at first very sceptical as to this interpretation; but I must now confess that there is really something in it, only that the links in the chain of cause and effect follow each other in a somewhat different order of time. The woman is, as a matter of fact, indirectly responsible for her husband’s death. Knudsen now remembers that Wanduwandu was strangely excited and reckless throughout the expedition, and I have heard from other quarters that the plump wife has always been a great coquette, and that there was a violent scene between the couple immediately before his departure. Here we have the key to the whole enigma; the elephant did not kill the hunter who in his confusion blundered into his way, because the man’s wife was at that moment flirting with another, but because the wife’s behaviour had already driven the man almost to desperation. In any case it is instructive to see how occurrences of this sort, several times repeated, come to be accepted as laws of nature.

Wanduwandu’s death did not change the date of our departure, which was already fixed; but it was noticeable that even our men were more eager to get away than before.

After the tragedy Knudsen found himself engaged in an obstinate contest with the widow, who, taking advantage of the situation, tried to bind him by contract—on the ground that he after all was the only one to blame for her husband’s death—to supply her with six new dresses a year. On the other side he was attacked by the relatives of the deceased, who suddenly appeared in swarms, like vultures, and demanded the arrears of pay due to him. But it was a case of Greek meeting Greek, and Nils finally decided to pay over the money to the widow. I thought that, in that case, she would be murdered before she reached Mchauru, and suggested that he should send a messenger to deposit the money with Matola, as the headman of Wanduwandu’s native district. It was explained to the woman that she could claim her property—it amounted to the enormous sum of four rupees and three quarters—whenever she might so desire; but probably she failed to understand this. At any rate, on her departure, which took place on the day after Knudsen’s final refusal to contract for an annual supply of clothing, the cook, Latu, missed a quantity of ground-nuts and some other eatables from his master’s stores. “Let her just come again, that’s all!” said Nils, outwardly indignant, but in reality visibly relieved. There is no ground for uneasiness; such a beauty is not likely to remain long unwooed in a country like this, and in all probability she is married again by this time. Notwithstanding this, Nils still urges our departure.

Another circumstance has been making my stay at Mahuta less and less agreeable. Even at Nchichira the daily devotions of the headman and other Muhammadans had been a trial, beginning before daybreak and repeated at noon and evening. Here the adherents of the Prophet are more numerous, and their faith more fervid, besides which we are now well into Ramadan. If my men are amusing me with their songs, or themselves with new ngoma dances, which they have an astonishing facility in inventing, their noise drowns the muttering and whining of the nineteen or twenty devotees under the Wali’s baraza. But if the latter can be heard alone, the effect is simply terrible. The Wali leads the exercises; his voice is not in any case melodious, but when uttering itself in Arabic gutturals, it fairly gets on one’s nerves, especially when the noise goes on till after ten at night. Unfortunately it is quite impossible to interfere, even if my principles as to religious toleration did not forbid it. However, I made an energetic and successful protest against the Wali’s habit of conversing at the top of his voice for a considerable time after dismissing his congregation, and all the time spitting copiously into the middle of the boma square. I told him that so long as I was in the place I was the Bwana mkubwa, and it was my business to determine what was desturi (custom), and what was not; and I expressly desired that he should cease to disturb my night’s rest.

Another inducement for a speedy return to the coast was the opportunity of securing a free passage north for my carriers by the Kaiser Wilhelm II, which was to leave Lindi for Dar es Salam soon after November 20. If I kept them with me till my own departure on December 2, I should not only have to pay a good deal in extra wages, but also a large sum in steamer-fares for them, as the boat by which I have taken my passage belongs, not to the Government, but to a private company. Finally, I desired to spend a short time on the coast in order to study the records of the criminal courts—the study of criminal psychology being of the highest importance in ethnography.

The noise on the morning of November 12 was greater than ever. My men leapt about the boma like sheep in a panic, and could scarcely await the word to start. The Wali could not be denied the privilege of escorting us for a short distance along the road. Not so his son, a lazy, dirty rascal, who has given us every reason to remember him by a performance he went through every evening, when the flag was lowered for the night, seizing it, if he thought himself unobserved, as it reached the ground, and sneezing into its folds, or otherwise employing it as a handkerchief.

There is not much to record about the march to Luagala. The country is level as a billiard-table, but the vegetation is far finer than on the southern side of the plateau. For two days the road passes through a splendid forest of large trees; human settlements, and the horrible scrubby bush inseparable from them being entirely absent. Shortly before we reach Luagala (which has a boma garrisoned by half a company and commanded by a lieutenant in the Imperial Army), the country becomes more hilly, and presents a curious aspect. As far as the eye can see extend groves of mangoes, loaded with fruit; but not a soul is visible, nothing but charred ruins of huts here and there. This is the former domain of Machemba, that remarkable Yao chieftain who, like the famous Mirambo in Unyanyembe, was able, by the prestige of his name to gather bands of daring spirits round him, tyrannize over the whole Makonde plateau, and even offer effective resistance to the German troops. The battlefields where he encountered them are still shown to the traveller. About ten years ago, however, Machemba preferred to leave the German territory, and has since lived on the other side of the Rovuma, almost in sight of Nchichira, terrifying the Portuguese for a change. The old warrior must have been an excellent organizer in more ways than one; a stupid man would never have thought of introducing this cultivation on the sandy soil of this particular part of the plateau. Luagala may be well situated from a strategic point of view, but as regards its water supply, it is worse off than any Makonde hamlet. At present all the drinking water has to be fetched from a place twelve or fifteen miles away.

After the long and elaborate dinner with which Lieutenant Spiegel, in the joy of his heart at receiving a European, welcomed us, it was a pleasure on starting once more, to walk through the cool shade of the forest. The road sloped gently downwards for some time—then the incline became steeper, and at last the caravan had to climb down an almost vertical declivity to the Kiheru—a little stream of crystal clearness. Such water is so rare in East Africa that in my delight I had already filled my cup and was lifting it to my lips, when Hemedi Maranga stopped me, saying, “Chungu, Bwana” (“It is bitter, sir”).

Saidi Kapote is already a typical lowland settlement, consisting of scattered, rectangular houses of some size, with saddle-ridged, thatched roofs. It suffers as much from the evening gale as the other villages at the foot of the hills. Hitherto the march down to the coast has resembled an obstacle-race, as, owing to the trouble with the carriers already mentioned, we have every morning been late in starting. Here, too, the Makonde engaged yesterday have vanished without leaving a trace, and though the headman is able to supply some men for the most important loads, we must leave behind those less urgently needed, and trust to his promise to send them on after us.

The last march but one begins. We are steadily advancing eastward, along the parallel ranges which stretch in endless monotony between the Kiheru and the Lukuledi. The caravan is now very numerous, consisting of over a hundred persons, and in the sandy soil, which here makes very heavy walking, the line straggles out to such a length that both ends are never in sight at once. However, we press onward untiringly, hour after hour. At the Lukuledi we take a short rest; then on again. At last, about the middle of the afternoon, after marching more than eight hours, we camp among extensive palm and mango groves, a short hour’s walk west of Mrweka. Everyone is quite worn out—too tired to put one foot before the other; but even the stupidest boy in attendance on the soldiers tosses uneasily in his dreams—for we shall be at Lindi to-morrow, and he is looking forward to the splendour and the enjoyments of this metropolis.

Under the star-spangled tropic sky my brave fellows fall in for the last time, and for the last time the noise of the caravan getting under way disturbs the silence of the bush on the other side of the deep ravine in which the Lukuledi flows. In the Indian quarter of Mrweka, sleepy men, women with nose-rings, and gaudily dressed babies start up in affright, when the discordant sounds of the horns blown by my expedition reach their ears. It is quickly growing lighter, when a khaki-clad figure seizes my mule’s bridle: it is Herr Linder, the excellent agricultural inspector, who was the last European to say good-bye to me at Ruaha, and is now the first to welcome me back. His presence here is a consequence of the boom at Lindi, as he is engaged in surveying some new plantation or other. We are off again at a rapid pace, down a slightly inclined slope to the left; the head of the line stops, those coming up behind him crowd on each other’s heels; and, on riding up to see what is the matter, I find that a broad creek bars the way. Being a stranger to the country, I must in this case be guided by my men. These, lifting their clothes as high as their shoulders, have waded slowly into the water. My mule resists a little out of sheer affectation, but soon jogs on bravely after the rest. All reach the other side without mishap, and, after a short pause to get the whole party together again, we start in double-quick time for Ngurumahamba, which is flooded by the springtide, the water having almost penetrated into the houses.

We have done with the wilderness. The road, still unfinished in July, is now in its complete state a masterpiece of engineering: it only wants a few motor cars to be a perfect picture of twentieth-century civilization. The last halt of any length is at the foot of Kitulo, where Knudsen insists on taking a photograph of me with a huge baobab as background, on the ground that I ought to be handed down to posterity in the garb of an African explorer. My men in the meantime have been smartening themselves up; and, very picturesquely grouped among the bales and boxes, they are scrubbing away at their teeth, which, as it is, could scarcely be whiter, with a zeal which one would be only too glad to see among some of our own compatriots. The tooth-brush (mswaki) used by these natives, is a piece of very fibrous wood, about eight inches long, and as thick as one’s thumb, which penetrates into every cranny of the teeth without injuring the enamel, and looks, when in use, like an enormous cigar. It performs its work well and is free from objection on the score of hygiene, especially as, a new one being always easily procurable, it need never remain in use too long.

I have just reached the top of Kitulo, and am looking back for the last time on that part of interior Africa in which I, too, have now by hard work won the right to be called an explorer, when Omari, the cook, comes panting and puffing up the hill, and roars at me as soon as he comes in sight, “Ndege amekwenda!” (“The bird has got away!”). In fact, the cage which for some weeks past had contained a brightly-coloured little bird—a kind of siskin—is now empty; a loose bar shows how he gained his freedom. How pleasantly, all these weeks, his song has enlivened the hot, dusty rest-houses in which we have been living, and made them a little more home-like; and how grateful he always was for the few heads of millet which sufficed for his keep. Now, he is off, just at the moment when I was wondering what to do with my little friend, knowing that he was not likely to thrive in the cold northern winter, and doubting whether I could safely entrust him to the first European I came across. His escape at this moment has cut the knot.

In close order, the soldiers in section-column, the Imperial Service flag unfurled to the fresh sea-breeze, we march into Lindi. My carriers are strangers to the place, and therefore the cries of the women, which usually greet every caravan making its entry, are few and far between. Smartly my soldiers wheel into the boma square, and there, as I am dismounting, stiff with the long ride, I see the first white man approach; he greets me pleasantly and seems honestly pleased to see me. A second comes up. “Good gracious! how ill you look! And as for that mule of yours, if it doesn’t croak before the day is out I’ll be shot, but you’ll have to pay for it all the same!” My illusions are rudely shattered. I turn away and beckon to the corporal, who has been standing a little apart, in correct military attitude, to come nearer. “You have been good soldiers, and you, Hemedi Maranga, the best of all. I am going to make a big feast for you. But now you can go home to your wives.” I shook hands with him, he gave the word of command, and the next moment the twelve had disappeared into the barrack-yard, while I went on to my old quarters. Knudsen is right; after all, it is better among the Washenzi.

I did not see much of my carriers in their few remaining days at Lindi, but I heard the more. Now their hour has come: the Kaiser Wilhelm is swinging at anchor out yonder on the river, and will start to-morrow at daybreak. My men are to go on board this evening at sunset. I have ordered them to be in front of the post-office (where I am living in a modest room on the upper floor) at half-past five, thinking it best to see them as far as the harbour myself. The appointed time has come, but not a carrier is to be seen. I wait till a quarter to six, and am becoming somewhat uneasy, when I am aware of the gradual approach of so frightful a din that there cannot be the slightest doubt as to who is causing it. But have the twenty-four been suddenly multiplied by three? A closely-packed crowd roars and surges in the square beneath me; the bass voices of the men, the shrill, vibrating cries of the women make up a pandemonium of sound; but no disorderly actions take place—in fact I had not expected any. The crowd follows me in a confused mass for the few hundred paces down to the harbour, where the ferry-boat is waiting. “Bwana, I would rather stay here,” says Kazi Ulaya, the handsome, with a tender look at the fair one beside him. “Do what thy heart prompts, my son,” I reply mildly. “And this is my boy, sir,” says Pesa mbili II, of Manyema, who has by this time recovered his plumpness. But he refrains from introducing to me the bibi, who, in some embarrassment, is hiding behind his broad back.

“Now sing those fine songs of yours once more.”

The men are standing round me in a serried circle. “Kuya mapunda” goes very well; the pleasing melody rises in full volume of sound above the voice of the rushing Lukuledi. In “Dasige Murumba” too, the singers acquit themselves fairly well; but when the standard song, “Yooh nderule” begins, the circle seems full of gaps, and my eye can distinguish in the twilight various couples scattered here and there among the bushes by the bank. “Ah! farewell scenes,” I think to myself, but soon perceive that I am mistaken; no tender sentiments are being discussed, but my matter-of-fact fellows are throwing themselves like wolves on the last repast prepared for them by loving hands before the voyage. I wish them, sotto voce, a good appetite, and make a note of the fact that the heart of the native, like that of the European, can be reached through his stomach.

The ferryman shouts impatiently to hurry them up, and I drive the unattached contingent of the singers down into the shallow water. Splashing and laughing they wade towards the boat; the darkness has come on rapidly, and I can only just distinguish the white figures as they clamber on board. “Yooh nderule, yooh nderule, bwana mkubwa nderule”—the familiar sounds, long drawn out, ring over the water in Pesa mbili’s voice—“kuba sumba na wogi nderulewa, yooh nderule”—the chorus dies away. The boat has disappeared in the darkness, and I turn my steps towards the mess-room, and the principal meal of the day, where I am once more claimed by civilization. The Weule Expedition is at an end.