Africa is the land of patience. All my predecessors had ample opportunity for acquiring and exercising that virtue, and it seems that I am not to be spared the necessary trials. After being nearly three weeks inactive at Dar es Salam, to be detained for about the same period in another coast town is rather too much, especially when the time for the whole journey is so limited, and the best part of the year—the beginning of the dry season—is passing all too quickly.

At Dar es Salam the paucity of steamer communication furnished the reason for delay, while here at Lindi it is the absence of the District Commissioner and the consequent lack of available police. The authorities will not hear of my starting without an armed escort, but soldiers are only to be had when Mr. Ewerbeck returns, so that I am compelled, whether I like it or not, to await his arrival. Not that I have found the waiting wearisome, either here or at Dar es Salam. The latter place, with its varied population and numerous European residents, would be novel and striking enough to attract the mere tourist, while, for my own part, I had an additional interest in the preparation for my future work. This consisted in seeing as much of the natives as time permitted. Many a morning and afternoon have I spent in their huts or yards, and succeeded in securing some good phonographic records of the songs sung at ngoma dances, besides numerous solos and melodies played by members of various tribes on their national instruments. On one occasion, indeed, the officials very kindly got up a dance expressly for my convenience. Unfortunately all the cinematograph negatives I took on that occasion were either blurred by shaking or over-exposed, so that we had to be content with some tolerable photographs of the peculiar dances, and the excellent phonographic records of the songs. Of the dances and their accompaniments I shall have more to say later.

My stay at Lindi has passed off less peacefully and agreeably than I had hoped. A day or two after landing here, I had to witness the execution of a rebel. Such a function can never be a pleasure to the chief performer, however callous; but if, after the reading of the long sentence in German and then in Swahili, the proceedings are lengthened by such bungling in the arrangements as was here the case, it can be nothing less than torture even to the most apathetic black. It is true that, as a precautionary measure, a second rope had been attached to the strong horizontal branch of the great tree which serves as a gallows at Lindi; but when the condemned man had reached the platform it appeared that neither of the two was long enough to reach his neck. The stoical calm with which the poor wretch awaited the dragging up of a ladder and the lengthening of one of the ropes was extremely significant as an illustration of native character, and the slight value these people set on their own lives.

Lindi forms a contrast to many other Coast towns, in that its interior keeps the promise of the first view from outside. It is true that the long winding street in which the Indians have their shops is just as ugly—though not without picturesque touches here and there—as the corresponding quarters in Mombasa, Tanga and Dar es Salam; but in the other parts of the straggling little town, the native huts are all embowered in the freshest of green. Two elements predominate in the life of the streets—the askari and the chain-gang—both being closely connected with the rising which is just over. The greater part of Company No. 3 of the Field Force is, it is true, just now stationed at strategic points in the interior—at Luagala on the Makonde Plateau, and at Ruangwa, the former seat of Sultan Seliman Mamba, far back in the Wamwera country. In spite of this, however, there is enough khaki left to keep up the numbers of the garrison. This colour is most conspicuous in the streets in connection with the numerous chain-gangs, each guarded by a soldier in front and another in the rear, which are to be met with everywhere in the neighbourhood of the old police Boma and the new barracks of the Field Force. I realize now what nonsense has been talked in the Reichstag about the barbarity of this method of punishment, and how superficial was the knowledge of the negro’s psychology and his sense of justice shown by the majority of the speakers. Though competent writers—men who, through a long residence in the country, have become thoroughly familiar with the people and their character—have again and again pointed out that mere imprisonment is no punishment for the black, but rather a direct recognition of the importance of his offence, their words have fallen on deaf ears. We Germans cannot get away from our stereotyped conceptions, and persist in meting out the same treatment to races so different in character and habit as black and white. Of course I do not mean to imply that a man can under any circumstances be comfortable when chained to a dozen fellow-sufferers (even though the chain, running through a large ring on one side of the neck, allows each one a certain freedom of movement), if only on account of the difficulties involved in the satisfaction of natural necessities. But then people are not sent to the chain-gang in order to be comfortable.

However, men guilty of particularly heinous crimes and those of prominent social position enjoy the distinction of solitary confinement. In the conversation of the few Europeans just now resident at Lindi, the name of Seliman Mamba is of frequent occurrence. This man was the leader of the rising in the coast region, but was ultimately captured, and is now awaiting in the Lindi hospital the execution of the sentence recently pronounced on him. As he has a number of human lives, including those of several Europeans on his conscience, he no doubt deserves his fate. As a historical personage who will probably long survive in the annals of our Colony, I considered Seliman Mamba worthy of having his features handed down to posterity, and therefore photographed him one day in the hospital compound. The man was obviously ill, and could only carry his heavy chain with the greatest difficulty. His execution, when it takes place, as it shortly must, will be a release in every sense of the word.

By far more agreeable than these “echoes of rebellion” are the results of my scientific inquiries among my own men and the Swahilis. My Wanyamwezi seem quite unable to endure inaction, and ever since our second day at Lindi, they have been besieging me from early morning till late at night with mute or even vocal entreaties to give them something to do. This request I granted with the greatest pleasure,—I made them draw to their heart’s content, and allowed them to sing into the phonograph as often as opportunity offered. I have already discovered one satisfactory result from our adventurous and—in one sense calamitous—voyage in the Rufiji. My men have wrought their sufferings, and their consequent treatment at the hands of the crew into a song which they now delight in singing with much energy and a really pleasing delivery. Here it is:—^[4]

The general drift of it is something like the following:—“We were on board day and night, till the day dawned, and then cast anchor. The Baharia (sailors) on board said, ‘You Washenzi (pagans, bush people) from the interior, you will vomit yourselves to death.’ But we came safe to Lindi after all, and said (to the sailors): ‘You mocked at God (by saying that we should die), but we came safe to land.’”

This love of singing is characteristic of the Wanyamwezi. In the course of my enforced detention here, I have taken many a photographic stroll, in which my men are always eager to accompany me. On these occasions I have to divide the small amount of apparatus necessary to be taken with me among as many of them as possible, so that everyone may have something to carry. It is never very long before Pesa mbili the Mnyampara or caravan headman, lifts up his voice—a very good one too—whereupon the chorus promptly falls in in excellent time. I may here give a specimen of these little marching songs:—

To judge by the words of this song, the Wanyamwezi must be exceedingly loyal to the German Government, for they march against all the rebellious southern tribes in turn and annihilate them. The Namuki are identical with the Majimaji, the insurgents of 1905–6. The time is a frantic recitative which makes a reproduction in our notation impossible. The exclamation “ki” conveys, according to the unanimous testimony of Pesa mbili and the most intelligent among his friends, the expression of the force with which the Rugaruga (the auxiliaries) smash the skulls of the wounded enemy, even though it should have to be done with a stamp of the heel. At every repetition of the ki the singers stamp on the ground so that it quivers—so completely can these peaceable Northerners throw themselves into all the horrors of the late rising; one can almost hear the skulls crash at every ki. This song of defiance is certainly not an original composition of my people’s, but has been borrowed by them from some of their tribesmen who served in the last campaign as Rugaruga and are now lounging about Lindi out of work. I have been obliged to engage some of these men as carriers for the march to Masasi; they are in their whole behaviour much more decided and defiant than my gentle grown-up children from Dar es Salam, so that I shall be glad to get rid of them when my destination is reached. I think the above song must belong to them.

Now that I am on the subject I will reproduce a march of the Sudanese soldiers which in its meaning closely resembles the one just given. This was sung into the phonograph for me by Sol (Sergeant-Major) Achmed Bar Shemba and a couple of divisions from the third company of the Field Force by order of that excellent African veteran, Captain Seyfried. The little non-com. stood like a bronze statue in front of the machine, and the gaunt brown warriors from Darfur and Kordofan closed up behind him, as if they had been on the drill-ground, in two ranks, each man accurately behind the one in front. We had no little trouble in making them take up the wedge formation necessary to produce the desired effect. The song runs thus:—

The singers, who are principally Nubians, state that this song is in their mother tongue, the Darfur dialect. I have not yet succeeded in obtaining a literal translation. The general meaning of the words, which are sung with enviable lung-power and indefatigable energy, is somewhat as follows:

“We are always strong. The Jumbe (headman) has been hanged by the command of Allah. Hongo (one of the insurgent leaders) has been hanged by the command of Allah.”

Thus much as to the results of my musical inquiries so far as they concern the foreign elements (foreign, that is to say, here at Lindi) of the Wanyamwezi and Nubians. I have obtained some records of ngoma songs from Yaos and other members of inland tribes, but I cannot tell for the present whether they are a success, as I find to my consternation that my cylinders are softening under the influence of the damp heat, so that I can take records, but cannot risk reproducing them for fear of endangering the whole surface. A cheerful prospect for the future!

Very interesting from a psychological point of view is the behaviour of the natives in presence of my various apparatus. The camera is, at any rate on the coast, no longer a novelty, so that its use presents comparatively few difficulties, and the natives are not particularly surprised at the results of the process. The only drawback is that the women—as we found even at Dar es Salam—usually escape being photographed by running away as fast as their legs will carry them. The cinematograph is a thing utterly outside their comprehension. It is an enchini, a machine, like any other which the mzungu, the white man, has brought into the country—and when the said white turns a handle on the little black box, counting at the same time, in a monotonous rhythm, “Twenty-one, twenty-two, twenty-one, twenty-two,” the native may be pleasantly reminded of the droning measures which he is accustomed to chant at his work; but what is to be the result of the whole process he neither knows nor cares.

The phonograph, on the contrary, is an enchini after the very heart, not only of the black man, but even of the black woman. If I should live to the age of Methuselah the scene in Mr. Devers’s compound at Dar es Salam will always remain one of the most delightful recollections connected with my stay in Africa. After spending some time in the native quarter, watching the dances of various tribes—here a Manyema ngoma, there one of the Wazaramo, or yonder again that of some coast people’s club, and observing the costumes of the performers, sometimes hideous but always picturesque, I returned to my own quarters, at the head of a procession numbering some hundreds of the dancers, male and female, in order to take down the audible part of the proceedings. Everything had gone off in the most satisfactory way; but every time I changed the diaphragms, took out the recorder and put in the reproducer, when the full-voiced melody poured forth from the mysterious funnel in exactly the same time and with the precise timbre which had been sung into it—what measureless and at the same time joyful astonishment was painted on the brown faces, all moist and shining with their exertions in singing and dancing! Whenever this happened, all the more unsophisticated souls joined in the chorus, to be speedily enlightened by the derisive laughter of the more “educated” element.

But the most delightful instance of naiveté came at the close of the proceedings, after I had used up my small stock of Swahili idioms in expressing my pleasure at a successful afternoon. Two women, who had previously attracted my notice by their tremendous vocal power, as well as by the elegance of their attire, came forward again; and, as the crowd fell back, leaving a clear space in front of the phonograph, first one and then the other approached the apparatus, dropped a curtsy in the finest Court style, and waving her hand towards the mouthpiece said, “Kwa heri, sauti yangu!”—“Good-bye, my voice!” This incident illustrates the way in which the native mind cannot get away from what is most immediately obvious to the senses. In the very act of uttering their farewell, these two women could hear for themselves that they had not lost their voices in the least, and yet because they had a moment ago, heard them distinctly coming out of the phonograph, they regarded themselves as deprived of them from that instant, and solemnly took leave of them.

As to my inquiries into the artistic aptitudes of the natives, I prefer to give the results in a connected form later on, when I shall have brought together a larger amount of material on which to form a judgment. So much, however, I can say even now: c’est le premier pas qui coûte is true, not only for the executant artist but also for the investigator. At Dar es Salam, the matter was simpler. My “boy” Kibwana (literally, “the Little Master”), a youth of the Wazegeju tribe from Pangani, though, like Omari the cook (a Bondei from the north of the colony), he had never had a pencil or a piece of paper in his hand before, had been too long in the service of Europeans to venture any objections when desired to draw something for me—say the palm in front of my window, or my piece of India-rubber. He set to work, and cheerfully drew away, with no anxieties as to the artistic value to be expected from the result.

In the case of my Wanyamwezi, with whom I have made a beginning here, in order to give them something to do, a mere order is of little use. If I put a sketch-book and pencil into the hands of one of my followers with the invitation to draw something, the inevitable answer is a perplexed smile and an embarrassed “Sijui, bwani”—“I don’t know how, sir.” Then one has to treat the man according to his individuality—with an energetic order, or a gentle request; but in every case I found that the best plan was to approach him on the side of his ambition. “Why, you’re a clever fellow, you know—a mwenyi akili—just look at your friend Juma over there—he is not nearly as clever as you—and yet, see how he can draw! Just sit down here and begin drawing Juma himself!” This subtle flattery proved irresistible to all but a few, who, despite everything I could say by way of encouragement, stuck to it that they could not do what was wanted. The rest are like the lion who has once tasted blood: they are insatiable, and if I had brought two dozen sketch-books with me, they would all be continuously in use. I found that, instead of leaving the beginner to choose his own subject, it was a better plan (as it is also educationally a sounder one) to suggest in the first instance something quite familiar—a Nyamwezi hut, a fowl, a snake, or the like. Then one finds that they set to work with some confidence in themselves, and that they are inordinately proud of their masterpieces, if their mzungu gives them the smallest word of praise. It is obvious that I should never dream of finding fault—my object being, not criticism with a view to improvement, but merely the study of the racial aptitudes and the psychological processes involved in artistic production.

My way of getting at the latter is to stipulate that each of my draughtsmen, as soon as he feels that his degree of proficiency entitles him to a reward, is to show me his work. Then comes a shauri^[5] usually of long duration, but extremely amusing for both parties. “What is this?” I ask, pointing with my pencil to what looks a perplexing complication of lines. “Mamba—a crocodile,” comes the answer, either with a slight undertone of indignant astonishment at the European who does not even know a crocodile when he sees it, or somewhat dejectedly on finding the work to be so unsuccessful that even the omniscient mzungu cannot tell what it is meant for. “Oh! a crocodile—very good!” I reply, and write the word beside the drawing. “Yes,” the artist never fails to add, “but it is a mamba of Unyamwezi,” or “of Usagara,” or “in the Ngerengere,” as the case may be. One is brought up short by this information, and asks, “Why? How so?” and then comes a long story in explanation. This is a crocodile which the artist and his friends (here follow their names in full), saw on the march from Tabora to the coast with such and such a European, and which came very near being the death of him at the crossing of such and such a swamp, or of the Ngerengere river. When writing down the first few of these commentaries, I did not pay any special attention to the fact of their always being connected with a particular incident; but now, after having acquired a large collection of drawings representing either single objects (animals, plants, implements, etc.), or scenes from native life, it has become clear to me that the African is incapable of drawing any object in the abstract, so to speak, and apart from its natural surroundings—or indeed from some particular surroundings in which he has met with it on some particular occasion. If he is told to draw a Mnyamwezi woman he draws his own wife, or at any rate some relative or personal acquaintance, and if he is to draw a hut, he proceeds in exactly the same way, and depicts his own or his neighbour’s. Just so with the genre pictures, which are not such in our sense of the word, but might almost be termed a species of historical painting. I have already a whole series of sketches representing a lion springing on a cow, or a hyæna attacking a man, or some similar scene from the life-struggle of the higher organisms, and the explanation is always something like this:—“This is a lion, and this is a cow, but the cow belonged to my uncle and the lion carried it off about four years ago. And this is a hyæna, and this man is my friend—say, Kasona—who was taken ill on the march from Tabora to Mwanza and had to stay behind, and the hyæna came and was going to bite him, but we drove it away and saved Kasona.”

These are only one or two specimens of my methods and results. I am convinced that I am on the right tack, though no doubt I shall make many mistakes and need much additional experience.

My dynamometer, which did such excellent service on board the Red Sea steamer in promoting friendly international relations, has not lost its virtue here. When I am at the end of my resources for amusing my men and the friends whom they have gathered round them since our arrival in Lindi, I put the steel oval into the hand of honest Pesa mbili, who, of course, must have the precedence in everything. He presses it, and then, with the whole troop of his black friends crowding round, gazes with the greatest excitement at the dial, as if he could read the mysterious signs engraved on the brass arc. When I have glanced at the scale and announced the result—of course the numbers only, as the kilogrammes would merely serve to perplex them—it is received with a certain quite comprehensible feeling of doubt; they do not yet know if the number means much or little, having no standard of comparison. The second man begins to excite interest; if, instead of his predecessor’s 35 kilogrammes, he can only reach 30, he is greeted by mildly derisive laughter, but if he excels his rival, he is a mwenyi nguvu—a strong man, worthy of the tribute of admiration which he receives with smiling dignity.

So each man takes his turn, and they will go on for hours without tiring. One thing only is felt by the more intelligent to be wanting—it interests them to know which among themselves is the strongest or weakest, but in order to get a higher and absolute standard of comparison, they are all eagerness to know what their lord and master can do. Of course I am willing to oblige them, at the close of the meeting, and press the instrument, first in my right hand and then in my left. When they hear the result (which, to my great satisfaction, requires no cooking), a unanimous “A-ah! bwana mkubwa!” bursts from the admiring circle—literally, “Ah! Great master!”—but about equivalent to, “What a giant you are for strength!”

In fact we Europeans, as far as the spontaneous putting forth of strength goes, are as giants compared with the African. I made fairly careful records of the figures for each man, not once only, but in several successive trials, so that no allowance need be made for novelty or want of practice, but how inferior they are to us! None of them could compass a greater pressure than 35 kilos with the right hand and 26 with the left, with the exception of one man who attained to something over 40 kilos; while I, even here in the damp heat of the coast region can still manage over 60 with the right and over 50 with the left. And yet nearly all my men are professional carriers, sturdy fellows with tremendous chest-measurement, broad shoulders and splendidly developed upper arm muscles. What they lack, as has so often been pointed out, is the power of concentrating the strength of the whole body at a given moment of time. These very Wanyamwezi are famous for their almost incredible powers of endurance.

The natives thus, as a whole, indisputably present a picture not without attractions from a psychological point of view; but in the six weeks or so which I have by this time spent on the coast, the Europeans have appeared to me almost more interesting still. Dar es Salam is so large and contains so many of our race that the new-comer does not have the contrasts between black and white forced on his notice, while the contrasts to be found among the white population are less observable on the wider field of a large settlement. Lindi, being very much smaller, leaves no room for either possibility; in the narrowness of its environment and the monotony of its life, there is nothing to modify the shock of contrasted and clashing individualities, and in such a place one sees with startling clearness the enormously powerful and rapid effect of residence in the tropics on the mental balance of a foreign race. It does not belong to my office to point to the—to say the least of it, curious—excrescences of our German class and caste spirit, which here, in a circle of Europeans numbering a dozen or less, brings forth singularly unpleasant fruits. I need not relate how the military element, recently “dethroned” by the establishment of a civil administration, looks down with a superior smile on the officials of that administration, or how the intrusion of the personal element into affairs cuts off every possibility of social intercourse, and, what is worse, of cordial cooperation in common work. To the new-comer, expressing his astonishment at such a state of things, old residents say (with a coolness contrasting strangely with their usual state of chronic irritation): “What do you expect?—this is not the only place where things are so—you will find it the same everywhere!” So it seems to be, if I may judge by all I have heard during these instructive weeks; but one may hope that this disagreeable phenomenon is only one of the many infantile diseases incidental to the early stages in the life of every colony. One thing, however, which I absolutely fail to understand is the furious fits of rage to which every white man who has lived long in the country appears to be subject. I am doing my best in the meantime to go on my way without calling of names or boxing of ears, but everyone is agreed in assuring me that I shall learn better in the course of the next few months. I cannot judge for the present whether life is really impossible without thrashing people—but I hope it is not the case.

In order not to dwell exclusively on the darker traits characteristic of Europeans in the tropics, I must mention the admirable gifts of household management possessed by most of them. Dar es Salam is so far a centre of civilization as to possess bakers, butchers, and shops of all kinds in plenty, yet even there I fancy that the office of mess president is by no means a sinecure. But who shall describe how the unlucky bachelor in a remote coast town has to rack his brains in order to set before his messmates—not merely something new, but anything at all! Only experience can teach how far in advance one has to provide for all the thousand-and-one trifles which are inseparable from our housekeeping. The price alone makes it impossible to depend to any great extent on tinned goods, and it becomes necessary to have sufficient stores on hand to last for days—sometimes for weeks and months, and, in addition, to concoct eatable dishes out of the wild herbs which the cook and kitchen-boy bring in. On the coast some variety is secured by the abundance of good fish; in the interior this resource fails. And when it happens—as it does just now—that even the standard typical bird of Africa, the domestic fowl, and its product, the egg, are not to be had, then the case is desperate indeed, and catering for a large number of people becomes a serious problem.

It is remarkable, however, how skilled even the most inveterate bachelors among the German residents are in solving this problem—not always with elegance, and certainly not always to the satisfaction of their critical predecessors in office, but yet so as to fill the novice at any rate with astonished admiration. Dr. Franz Stuhlmann, who accompanied Emin Pasha on his last disastrous journey—a thoroughly competent ethnographer and the guardian and cherisher of the African plant-world, so far as it can be adapted to the service of man—has long been a celebrity in the culinary department throughout the whole Colony. Stuhlmann has the reputation of being able to prepare a dainty dish from every weed that grows beside the native path; he is a walking encyclopædia of tropical cookery. Others are less proficient than this, but I cannot yet get over my astonishment at the way in which Captain Seyfried, for instance, can produce something eatable out of the most elementary ingredients, at his achievements in salting and pickling, at the unimpeachable jellies he contrives to serve up even at the present temperature, and at the variety which always characterizes his bill of fare.

I must here make an end, once for all, of one fallacy prevalent at home. “Why, you surely cannot eat anything in that heat!” is a remark which never fails to occur in any conversation having the tropics for its subject, but which betrays a complete misconception of the conditions. In the first place, the heat is not so unendurable as commonly supposed by us—at any rate during the dry season, on the coast, where a fresh sea-breeze always blows by day. But, in addition to this, the waste of tissue goes on much more rapidly in tropical than in temperate climates. Not even the new-comer is surprised to see “old Africans” consuming an extensive “first breakfast” at a very early hour, in which various preparations of meat figure, though fruit is also conspicuous. At midday even a minor official never thinks of less than two courses and dessert, and in the evening after office hours, all ranks and professions go in for a repast which at home would certainly rank as a public banquet. This seemingly luxurious mode of life, however, by no means deserves the reprehension one may feel inclined to bestow on it. On the contrary, it is physiologically both justifiable and necessary, if the body is to offer permanent resistance to the deleterious influence of the climate. The new-comer is not surprised by the appetite of others because, unconsciously, he shares it. Personally, though I wield quite a creditable knife and fork at home, my performances out here would make me the terror of most German housewives.

The only article of diet I do not get on with is alcohol. At home I can appreciate a glass of beer or wine, and on board the Prinzregent we passengers levied a pretty heavy toll on the supplies of “Münchener” and “Pilsener”; but since I landed in this country I have taken no beer at all and wine only in very small quantities, while I have been quite unable to acquire a taste for whisky and soda, the national drink of all Germans in East Africa. Such abstinence is easily understood at Lindi, where there is no ice to be had; but even at Dar es Salam, where Schultz’s brewery supplies the whole town with ice every day, I found I had no taste for alcoholic beverages. This is a great advantage as regards my journey into the interior, as I am saved the inconvenience of taking loads of bottles with me.

I am glad to say that my enforced detention on the coast is nearing its end. Commissioner Ewerbeck, who returned from the interior a few days ago, is most kindly willing to start again with me to-morrow, so as to escort me with a detachment of police through the Wamwera country—the scene of the late rising—as far as Masasi. He has still work to do in the Central Lukuledi Valley, for, though most of the insurgent leaders have long ago been captured and adorn the streets of Lindi in the shape of chain-gangs, the pursuit of others is still going on and will yet cost many a shauri. From Masasi, Mr. Ewerbeck will have to return immediately to Lindi, in time for the formal reception of the delegates from the Reichstag, who are to visit the south of the Colony next month, on their much-discussed tour through East Africa.

My first glimpse of the interior, by the bye, has hardly been a pleasant one. In the course of the riding-lessons which Captain Seyfried has been giving me, we one evening made an excursion to the Kitulo. This is a long, fairly precipitous range of heights, about 570 feet above sea-level, rising immediately behind Lindi and separating the narrow sandy plain on which the town stands from the back country. A landmark of our civilization—a tower built for the sake of the view—was, some years ago, erected on the top of this Kitulo. When I ascended it by the help of a somewhat decrepit ladder, the sun had already set, and the whole western landscape—precisely the part of the Dark Continent which I wish to penetrate within the next few days—lay extended before me as a dark, menacing shadow. For one moment my mind was clouded by gloomy forebodings, but I speedily recalled my old luck which has never yet forsaken me. “Never mind—I’ll get the better of you yet!” I exclaimed, sotto voce, as I lit a new cigar with the utmost philosophy, and mounted my mule for the return journey.