The greater thoroughness and system with which anthropology and the kindred sciences have been cultivated in Germany than in this country, has been repeatedly brought home to us; but in nothing is it more apparent than in the difficulty of finding equivalents for quite elementary technical terms. The distinction between ethnology and ethnography, indeed, is pretty generally recognized, and is explained in works as popular in scope as Professor Keane’s Ethnology and Man Past and Present. But Vōlkerkunde, which includes both these sciences and some others besides, is something which certainly cannot be translated by its etymological equivalent “folklore;” and, though the word “prehistoric” is perfectly familiar, we have no such noun as “prehistory,” far less a professorship of the same in any university. These remarks are suggested by the fact that Dr. Weule, whose experiences in East Africa are here presented to the English reader, is “Professor of Vōlkerkunde und Urgeschichte” at Leipzig, besides being Director of the Ethnographical Museum in the same city.

Dr. Karl Weule, whose name is less well known in England than in his own country, has in the past devoted himself rather to geography than to ethnography proper. He was a pupil and friend of the late Friedrich Ratzel, whose History of Mankind was translated into English some years ago, and whose Politische Geographie gave a new direction to the study of that science in its more immediate relation to the historical development of mankind, or what is now called “anthropogeography.” It was Ratzel, too, who suggested to Dr. Helmolt the idea of his Weltgeschichte, a comprehensive history of the world, built up out of detached monographs, including three by Dr. Weule, on the historical importance of the three great oceans. (Only one of these appears in the English edition, with introduction by Professor Bryce, published in 1901). Dr. Weule returned to the same subject in his History of Geography and Exploration (Geschichte der Erdkenntnis und der geographischen Forschung) and a detached essay, Das Meer und die Naturvōlker (both published in 1904), with various other monographs of a similar character.

After completing his university studies at Göttingen and Leipzig, Dr. Weule resided from 1891 to 1899 at Berlin, first as a member of the Richthofen Seminary, where his work was more purely geographical, and afterwards as assistant in the African and Oceanian section of the Ethnological Museum. In 1899 he was appointed to the Assistant Directorship of the Leipzig Museum, and at the same time to the chair which he still occupies at that University; and, seven years later, he was entrusted with the research expedition described in the following pages, where its scope and objects are set forth with sufficient clearness to render further reference in this place unnecessary. After his return he was promoted to the appointment he now holds at the Leipzig Museum.

His residence in Africa lasted a little over six months, and the record before us shows that he made good use of his time. Several features in his narrative have the merit of novelty, at least as far as the general reader is concerned; for though the cinematograph and phonograph have been made use of for some time past in the service of anthropology, yet we do not remember to have seen the results of the latter figuring to any great extent in a work of this sort, though Sir Harry Johnston has reproduced one phonographic record of a native air in his Uganda Protectorate. (It is very unfortunate that so many of Dr. Weule’s cinematograph films proved a disappointment; this instrument is proving one of the most valuable adjuncts to exploration, especially in the case of tribes whose peculiar customs are rapidly passing away before the advance of civilization). Another point which imparts great freshness to Dr. Weule’s work is the happy inspiration which led him to collect native drawings; the sketches by his carriers and especially the portrait of the author himself on p. 368 are decided contributions to the gaiety of nations, and strike out a line unworked, so far as I am aware, by previous travellers. It is a matter of deep and lasting regret to me, personally, that I ever parted with a similar gem of art, picked up at Blantyre, and presumably representing a European engaged in inspecting his coffee plantation.

This whole question of native African art is very interesting. Properly speaking, nothing in the way of indigenous graphic art is known to exist in Africa, outside Egypt and Abyssinia, (if indeed it can be called indigenous in the latter case), except the rock paintings of the Bushmen, which, as is well known, have in some cases attained real excellence. (The best published reproductions up to the present date are contained in the late G. W. Stow’s Native Races of South Africa.) In South Africa wherever Bantu natives have executed any paintings beyond the simplest geometrical patterns, they are found to have learnt the art from Bushmen. The natives on Mount Mlanje (Nyasaland) decorate their huts with paintings of animals, but these have not yet been sufficiently examined to pronounce on their quality; and, on the other hand, many things render it probable that there is a strong Bushman element in the population of Mlanje (at least in the indigenous Anyanja, who have been only partly displaced by the Yaos). Dr. Weule states that this kind of “fresco” decoration is very common on the Makonde Plateau, but considers that it is entirely on the same level as the drawings of his carriers—i.e., that it shows no artistic aptitude or tradition, and merely consists of scrawls such as those with which innate depravity impels every untaught human being to deface any convenient blank space. The single specimen reproduced in his book is not precisely calculated to refute his theory, yet it is no rougher than some of the cruder Bushmen drawings (which show every conceivable degree of skill and finish); and, if the daubs in question are merely the product of the universal gamin instinct, surely, huts having clay walls would everywhere be adorned with animal-paintings, which is by no means the case.

The comparative value of Dr. Weule’s various results must be left to the judgment of experts; but it seems safe to assume that he was most successful in what may be called the outside part of his task: in forming a collection and in describing what is visible and tangible in the life and customs of the people. That he should have failed to penetrate their inner life is scarcely surprising. What does surprise one is that he should have expected to do so at such exceedingly short notice. His disappointment in this respect at Masasi, and subsequently at Chingulungulu, is calculated to provoke a smile, if not “from the sinful,” at least from the veteran in African experience. The greater his experience the more is the inquirer inclined to hesitate before putting direct questions even when they cannot be described as “leading”; but Dr. Weule seems to have recognized no other mode of investigation. The wonder is that the elders, officially convened by tuck of drum from village after village and set down to be pumped till both parties were heartily weary of the process, should have told him anything at all—as they undoubtedly did, and much of it, to judge from internal evidence, correct enough. The most sympathetic of travellers does not always find it easy to satisfy his thirst for knowledge, and Dr. Weule’s methods, on his own showing, were frequently such that I prefer to withhold any comment.

Dr. Weule devoted a considerable amount of time to the study of the languages spoken in the districts he visited, viz., Makua, Yao, and Makonde; but he does not appear to have published any linguistic documents beyond the songs, etc., given in the present volume. It is not clear whether he was aware of any work previously done in this direction, but he certainly speaks as though he were the first to reduce these idioms to writing, though abundant materials exist in print for the study of Yao, and the late Bishop Maples published a grammatical sketch of Makua which is excellent as far as it goes, not to mention the more recent work of Professor Meinhof. It is also extremely strange that, while insisting on the close relationship between the different languages of the Makonde Plateau, he should have overlooked the curious cleavage between Makua,—which has peculiarities directly connecting it with the distant Sechuana and Sesuto—and its neighbours.

Though the scene of Dr. Weule’s labours was repeatedly visited by Europeans, even before the German occupation, not much has been written about it in this country outside the publications of the Universities’ Mission. Livingstone ascended the Rovuma in 1862, to within thirty miles of Ngomano at the Lujende junction; his farthest point being apparently a little higher up than the camp occupied by Dr. Weule in August, 1906. He had hoped to find a navigable waterway to the immediate vicinity of Lake Nyasa; and, in fact, some natives told him that the Rovuma came out of the Lake; but the rapids and rocks made it impossible to take the boats beyond the island of Nyamatolo, which, though not marked on Dr. Weule’s map, must be somewhere near the mouth of the Bangala. Most of the names given by Livingstone are difficult to identify on recent maps; but this is not surprising, as native villages are usually known by the name of the chief or headman for the time being. It is true that some of these names are more or less permanent, being official or hereditary designations assumed by every successive functionary; but the population has shifted so much during the last forty years that the old names have been forgotten or transferred to other sites. Thus Mr. H. E. O’Neill, in 1882, found the Yao chief Chimsaka living in the eastern part of the Mavia Plateau a little east of 40° E, having been driven from his former place on the Upper Rovuma, more than two hundred miles to the west, by a raid of the Mangoni (Angoni or Maviti).

The country is still inhabited, as it was in Livingstone’s time, by the Makonde, Makua, and Matambwe tribes, with the Wamwera to the north in the hinterland of Lindi, and the Mavia (Mabiha) south of the Rovuma, but they have moved about a good deal within its limits, while the Yaos have penetrated it from the west. The raids of the Angoni or Maviti have also played a great part in these changes. Dr. Weule, as we shall see, made careful inquiries on the subject of these tribal migrations, and the information given to him fits in fairly well with what others have obtained from the Yaos in the Shire Highlands and the Angoni to the west of Lake Nyasa.

Livingstone returned to this region on his last journey, when he landed at Mikindani Bay (March 24, 1866) with those unfortunate camels and buffaloes whose sufferings on the jungle-march made his diary such painful reading. The choice of camels for transport in this country was certainly a mistake; but a greater mistake—and one which he bitterly regretted—was made in the choice of the men who drove the camels.

On this occasion, Livingstone followed the Rovuma by land as far as Mtarika’s (the old village about the Lujende confluence, near Chimsaka’s former abode, not the Mtarika’s which will be found marked in Dr. Weule’s map on the Lujende itself), and struck south-westward in the direction of the Lake, which he reached, near the mouth of the Mtsinje, on the 8th of August. The route followed some years previously by Dr. Roscher, who made his way from Kilwa to Lake Nyasa, sighting it November 24, 1859, a few weeks after its discovery by Livingstone, lies somewhat to the north-west of the country dealt with in this book, and nowhere touches the scene of Dr. Weule’s travels.

In 1875, the late Bishop Steere followed in Livingstone’s tracks, starting from Lindi on the first of November, and reaching Mwembe (Mataka’s village) in a little over five weeks. This was the first of a series of remarkable journeys accomplished by members of the Universities’ Mission, of which we need here only mention, that of the Rev. W. P. (now Archdeacon) Johnson and the late Rev. C. A. Janson in 1882. The station of Masasi was founded in 1876, and that of Newala in 1882; the buildings of the former were nearly all destroyed in the “Majimaji” rising of 1906, shortly before Dr. Weule’s visit, and are only now in process of reconstruction.

The Rovuma valley was further explored in 1882, by the late Joseph Thomson, whom the Sultan of Zanzibar had commissioned to examine its mineral resources, with a view to ascertaining if workable coal-seams existed. His report was, on the whole, unfavourable, though a French engineer, M. D’Angelvy, subsequently (in 1884) despatched on a similar errand, came to a different conclusion. The Livingstone expedition had found coal near Lake Chidia, in 1862; but up to the present day it has not been utilized.

Mr. H. E. O’Neill, when British Consul at Mozambique, did a great deal of exploring, in an unobtrusive way, between the coast and Lake Nyasa, and, in 1882 examined the country inland from Tungi Bay, and south of the Rovuma, being the first European to penetrate the Mavia Plateau and come in contact with that tribe who enjoyed among their neighbours the reputation of being “so fierce and inhospitable that no one dares to pass through their country.” This exclusiveness Mr. O’Neill found to be largely if not entirely the result of the persecution the Mavia had undergone at the hands of stronger tribes, particularly the Yaos, incited by coast slavetraders. They were unwilling to guide him to their villages, and took him there by night so that he might be the less likely to find his way there a second time; but, “when once their natural suspicions were allayed and confidence established, they were hospitable and generous, and showed neither distrust nor reserve. Indeed, they seemed to me to be a particularly simple-minded, harmless folk.” Men, as well as women, wear the pelele, or lip ring, as mentioned by Dr. Weule, who never came across the Mavia for himself. Of their wearing their hair in pig-tails, Mr. O’Neill says nothing—in fact, beyond the pelele, there was little to distinguish them from neighbouring tribes, and he was disposed to consider them a branch of the Makonde. His description of their villages hidden away in the thorny jungle and approached by circuitous paths recalls what Dr. Weule says as to the difficulty of finding the Makonde settlements without a guide. In the course of this journey Mr. O’Neill discovered Lake Lidede, and at one point of his march he looked down on the Rovuma Valley from the edge of the Mavia Plateau at almost the same point as that where Dr. Weule saw it from the opposite escarpment, as described on pp. 343–4. It is interesting to compare the two accounts:—Mr. O’Neill’s is to be found in the Proceedings of the R.G.S. for 1882, p. 30.

Mr. J. T. Last, starting from Lindi on the 28th of October, 1885, made his way overland to Blantyre, via Newala, Ngomano and the Lujende Valley, in eleven weeks. He remarks on the “desolation of the country which was formerly well populated, as the sites of the old villages show; but now there is not a house to be seen”—through the raids of the Magwangara and others. Lions were as numerous as they appear to have been in 1906, and for a similar reason. One of Mr. Last’s carriers was dragged out of the grass shelter where the men were sleeping, thus affording an almost exact parallel to the incident related by Dr. Weule on pp. 394–8.

At this time the country was under the nominal rule of the Sultan of Zanzibar, who stationed his officials at some of the places near the coast and exercised a somewhat intermittent and uncertain authority over the chiefs in the interior. By the treaty of 1890 the whole of the mainland as far back as Lakes Victoria and Tanganyika, between the Rovuma on the south, and the Umba River on the north, was handed over to Germany, while the protectorate over what remained of the Sultan’s dominions (viz., the islands of Zanzibar and Pemba) was taken over by the British Government.

It seems improbable that this immense territory can ever be colonised by Germans in the same way in which Canada and Australia have been colonised by ourselves. There are few if any parts where German peasants and workmen could expect to live, labour, and bring up families. So far as the country has been settled at all, it is on the plantation system: European capitalists cultivating large tracts of land by means of native labour. Some coffee plantations in Usambara are, we understand, flourishing fairly well, though not producing wealth beyond the dreams of avarice; but the system, if it is to be extended to the whole territory, does not augur well for the future. It is not a healthy one for employer or employed; it always tends in the direction of forced labour and more or less disguised slavery; and, in the end, to the creation of a miserable and degraded proletariat. Much more satisfactory is the method to which Dr. Weule extends a somewhat qualified approval (though there can be no doubt that it has his sympathies) of securing to the native his own small holding and buying his produce from him, as has been done, to some extent, with the best results, in our own Gold Coast Colony. Dr. Weule remarks, somewhat naively, that a wholesale immigration from Germany would be interfered with if the native “claimed the best parts of his own country for himself.” But surely a ver sacrum of the kind contemplated is unthinkable in the case of East Africa.

It is possible that the reader may be somewhat perplexed by Dr. Weule’s estimate—or estimates—of the native character. The recurring contradictions apparent in various parts of his book arise from the plan on which it is written. In the original edition, the traveller’s narrative takes the form of letters addressed to his wife and friends from the successive stages of his journey. This form has been dispensed with (beyond the dates at the head of each chapter) in translation,^[1] because the personal allusions, in a foreign dress, rather detract from than add to the interest of the narrative, and all the more so, as they are not, in a sense, genuine, but have been added, après coup, to impart an air of verisimilitude to the letters. The latter, in fact, were not written from the places at which they are dated, but were put into shape after the author’s return to Europe, from notes made on the spot, together with extracts from actual letters, not printed as a whole. This material, in order not to sacrifice the freshness of first impressions, has been used very much as it stood, and it will be noticed that, in many cases, the observations made at different places correct and qualify one another.

I am glad to find that Dr. Weule stands up for the native in respect of the old accusation of laziness. He shows that the people of the Makonde Plateau, at any rate, work pretty hard (in some points, as in their water-carrying, unnecessarily hard) for a living. He also defends them against the charge of improvidence, making it quite plain that they take infinite pains in storing their seed-corn for next season, and that, if they do not save more of their crops against a year of famine, instead of making the surplus into beer, it is because they have, under present circumstances, absolutely no means of keeping them. It is true that, in one passage, he seems to depreciate the industry of native women, by comparison with the work done by German maid-servants and farmers’ wives. But he forgets to make allowance for the difference of climate—and, perhaps, one may be permitted to doubt whether any human being really ought to work as hard as most German women do in town or country.

On the whole, Dr. Weule is kindly disposed towards the native. He does not seem entirely to have escaped the danger deprecated on p. 41—at least it strikes one that some of the (doubtless not unmerited) castigations bestowed in the course of his pages might have been dispensed with by the exercise of a little more patience and tact; but he remained throughout on the best of terms with his carriers, and appears to have parted from Moritz, Kibwana and Omari, in spite of the trials to which they had subjected him in the exercise of their several functions, with no ill-feeling on either side. More than once he bears testimony to the uniform good manners of the people whose villages he visited, and to their homely virtues—their unfailing cheerfulness, their family affection, and their respect for parents. At the same time, he relates various incidents calculated to leave a less pleasant impression, though it must be remembered that the proportion they bear to the whole of native life is probably less than that borne by the criminal cases reported in our newspapers to the daily life and conduct of our population in general. Dr. Weule’s stay in Africa was surely long enough for him to see that the Bantu native is not in general bloodthirsty or ferocious; that, on the contrary, when not maddened by terror or resentment, he is gentle, reasonable, and even somewhat lacking in vindictiveness compared with other races. Yet, in the scientific report on the expedition (a publication several times alluded to in the course of the work before us) the author is, it seems to me, guilty of a grave injustice.

The reader will note that, on his return to the coast (see pp. 27–9), he spent some time in studying the records of the Criminal Court at Lindi, though he does not here tell us anything about the results of his examination. Now these records certainly afford valuable material for the study of social conditions; but they should be used with discrimination. Dr. Weule does not give what is of the very first importance, the number of criminal cases and their proportion to the population, especially as the serious cases, which are brought for trial to Lindi, represent the whole of an extensive province. But he mentions two atrocities as a proof of the ignorance shown by certain German newspapers, which “during the last two years have thought it necessary to insist, over and over again, on the noble traits in the negro character,” and of the “predominance of low instincts in those sons of untamed nature” who have “an innate disposition to violence.” One of the cases in question was that of a woman who killed her own mother by a blow with the pestle used for pounding corn. But it is hardly fair to place this murder on the same footing as a crime committed out of mere brutal passion: the woman’s children had died, and she believed her mother to have caused their death by witchcraft. We know what horrible cruelties this belief has induced people not otherwise depraved to commit: an instance occurred only twelve or thirteen years ago, no further off than Clonmel. The other case, which is certainly revolting enough, was the revenge of a husband on a guilty wife. But both of them together prove absolutely nothing without information which would enable us to see whether they are to be regarded as exceptional, or as in any sense typical. The other incident given by way of proving that violence and brutality are “in the blood” of the native, is that of an unfortunate woman who, unsuspiciously passing through the bush, fell in with a band of unyago boys, and was by them seized and put into a slave-stick “out of mere mischief and enjoyment of violence.” The comment on this is that, unless the woman had been a stranger from a distance (who, under ordinary circumstances would not be very likely to travel alone), she must have known that there was an unyago in the neighbourhood, that if she traversed the bush in that direction she would do so at her peril, and that her trespassing on the forbidden ground was an act of the grossest impropriety combined with sacrilege. As for “delight in violence”—surely that, in one form or another, is an inherent attribute of the “human boy” in every part of the world, above all when he conceives himself to have a legitimate excuse?

The mention of the unyago mysteries suggests a subject on which Dr. Weule has obtained fuller information than any previous writer—at any rate on this part of Africa. It is surprising that he should have been able to secure so many photographs of the dances—especially those of the women—but these only constitute the more public part of the ceremonial. As to the instruction given to the younger generation, he does not seem to have got beyond generalities except in the case of the two old men who, when very drunk, began to dictate the actual formula in use, though they did not get to the end of it. Whether any tribal traditions, any myths, embodying the religious ideas of a far distant past, are handed down along with such practical teaching about life as the elders are able to give, does not appear—but from what we know about other tribes it seems highly probable. Among the Anyanja (Wanyasa) of Lake Nyasa, e.g., a story accounting for the origin of that lake is told. But perhaps many of the Makonde and Makua traditions have by this time been forgotten. It is evident that they have led a very unsettled life for the past forty or fifty years, besides being decimated by the slave-trade. (This circumstance, by the by, should always be remembered in connection with Dr. Weule’s pictures of native life, which leave a painfully squalid impression. I am far from wishing to idealize the “state of nature”; but neither the Zulus, nor the Anyanja, nor the Yaos of the Shire Highlands are so ignorant and careless of hygiene or so neglectful of their babies as the poor women of Chingulungulu and Masasi are represented by him to be.)

These “mysteries” are universal—or practically so—among the Bantu tribes of Africa, and no doubt most others as well. Usually they are spoken of as an unmixed evil, which Christian missionaries do all in their power to combat, and some are not backward in calling out for the civil power (in countries under British administration) to put them down. The subject is a difficult and far-reaching one, and cannot adequately be discussed here. My own conviction, which I only give for what it is worth, is that it is a great mistake to interfere with an institution of this sort, unless, perhaps, when the people themselves are ceasing to believe in it, in which case there is danger of its becoming a mere excuse for immorality. Otherwise, even the features which to our feelings seem most revolting are entwined with beliefs rooted in a conception of nature, which only the gradual advance of knowledge can modify or overthrow. And we must remember that the problem which these poor people have tried to solve in their own way is one which presses hardly on civilized nations as well. Parents and teachers have discovered the evil of keeping the young in ignorance, or leaving them to discover for themselves the realities of life; but many of them appear helplessly perplexed as to the best way of imparting that instruction.

As regards missions, Dr. Weule has not very much to say, but I am sorry to find that he cannot refrain from the cheap sneer about “Christianity not suiting the native,” which seems to be fashionable in some quarters. It seems to be a mere obiter dictum on his part—perhaps unthinkingly adopted from others—for he brings no arguments in support of his view, beyond remarking that Islam suits the African much better, as it does not interfere with his freedom. But some excuse may be found for those who hold that view in the erroneous conceptions of Christianity which have prompted various mistakes on the part of missionaries. It is quite true that such or such a system of complicated doctrinal belief, the product of long ages and a special environment, may not suit the African. It is also true that, if Christianity means Europeanisation—if it means that the African is to be made over into a bad imitation of an Englishman or German—it is impossible that it should gain any real hold on him. But it is no exaggeration to say that no people on earth are more capable—many are not so capable—of appreciating and acting on the spirit of the Gospel, of simple love and trust in the Eternal Goodness and goodwill towards their fellow-men.

The question is a wide one, which cannot be fully discussed within these limits. Missionaries have often made mistakes and acted injudiciously; they have in some cases done serious harm, not from failure to act up to their principles, but from error in those very principles and a fatal fidelity to them. They may have interfered between chiefs and people, and broken down customs better left alone, or may unwittingly have encouraged the wrong sort of converts by welcoming all and sundry, including fugitives from justice or people discontented with their home surroundings for reasons quite unconnected with high spiritual aspirations. Or again, they may incur blame for the deficiencies of alleged converts who, after honouring the mission with their presence for a time, depart (usually under a cloud) and victimise the first European who can be induced to employ them.

But there is another side to the matter. A man—whether consciously a follower of the Nietzschean doctrine or not—who thinks that “the lower races” exist to supply him with labour on his own terms, is naturally impatient of a religion which upholds the claims of the weak, and recognizes the status of man as man. Hinc illæ lacrymæ, in a good many cases. Honestly, I do not think this is Dr. Weule’s view. But I cannot quite get rid of the suspicion that he was repeating what he had heard from a planter, and that it was, in strict accuracy, the planter’s convenience, and not the native, that Christianity failed to “suit.” Anyone who has read a certain pamphlet by Dr. Oetker, or Herr von St. Paul Illaire’s Caveant Consules, or Herr Woldemar Schütze’s Schwarz gegen Weiss will not think this remark too strong.

It would be deplorable, indeed, if those writers had to be taken as typifying the spirit of German colonial administration in Africa, or indeed anywhere else. But I do not think we have any right to suppose that this is so. There has been, I think, too much militarism—and very brutal militarism, in some cases—in that administration; but this is an evil which appears to be diminishing. There is a tendency, perhaps, to worry the native with over-minute government regulations, which, no doubt, will as time goes on be corrected by experience. And there is no lack of humane and able rulers who bring to their task the same conscientious, patient labour which their countrymen have bestowed on scientific research; who are trained for their posts with admirable care and thoroughness, and grudge no amount of trouble to understand and do justice to the people under their care. They shall in no wise lose their reward.