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TRISTRAM PRUEN, M.D. Fello'v of the Royal Geographical Society WITH ILLUSTRATIONS LONDON SEELEY AND CO., LIMITED ESSEX STREET, STRAND 1891 TO COLONEL SIR CHARLES EUAN -SMITH K.C.B., C.S.I., I.ATE HER MAJESTY'S AGENT AND CONSUL-GENERAL AT ZANZIBAR, NOW HER MAJESTY'S MINISTER AT THE COURT OF MOROCCO, WHO HAS WORKED SO EARNESTLY FOR THE ABOLITION OF slavery; AND WHO, BY HIS JUDGMENT, TACT, AND UNSELFISH DEVOTION TO DUTY, HAS AT LAST PLACED FREEDOM WITHIN THE REACH OF MILLIONS OF HIS FELLOW CREATURES ON THE DARK CONTINENT OF AFRICA, THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED, WITH llil NUTHOR'S MOST SINCERE RESPECT AND ADMIRATION. PREFACE The author has endeavoured in this book to de- scribe in detail the daily life of the natives of Central Africa who live in and around the districts which have so recently been brought under British influence. He has also discussed the results of endeavouring to bring the untutored native, all un- prepared, suddenly under the influence of laws and customs which have been gradually developed else- where through thirty generations of progressive civilization. He believes that the facts thus brought forward will be of interest to all who thoughtfully consider the ever -widening boundaries, and ever- increasing responsibilities of the great Empire to which they belong. He also hopes that what he has written will supply two distinct wants; the want felt by the Philan- thropist, at home, who wishes to study the Slave vi Preface Trade in all its bearings, and that felt by the Missionary or Trader who, about to proceed to East Equatorial Africa, desires to know what he is likely to meet with there, and what preparations he should make before going. He has limited himself, as far as possible, to describing what he has actually seen and heard. He hopes that his book may throw some new light upon* the Slave Trade, and the daily life of the African, as it is written by one who has lived amongst the people as their friend and equal, and who has thus been permitted to see and hear. things hidden from the passing traveller, and even from the resident who rules over rather than lives amongst the people with whom he is brought into daily contact. He has been much encouraged in this hope by a letter from Sir C. B. Euan-Smith, who, in kindly accepting the dedication of the book, expressed his opinion that it would supply a distinct want. Uganda has been left entirely out of account in the descriptions, partly because the Waganda differ in so many points from other East African races, and partly because they have been so fully described by Mr. Ashe, in his interesting book, ' Two Kings of Uganda.' The chapter on Diseases is necessarily incomplete Preface vii in a book intended for general circulation ; but the author hopes shortly to publish, for the use of non- medical travellers, a separate pamphlet containing more full information on this point, together with hints on the diagnosis and treatment of the more common diseases met with in East Africa. Lastly, the author wishes to acknowledge the debt of gratitude he owes to many kind friends who have helped him much in getting the book into shape. Especially is he indebted to his cousin, Mr. G. G. Pruen, of Cheltenham College, whose advice on many points has been invaluable ; to the lady who took much pains in arranging the music in Chapter III. ; to that other lady who, with very poor materials as copies, succeeded in producing illustrations both accurate and artistic ; and to Mr. Seeley, for whose kind encouragement and assistance he feels truly grateful. Cheltenham, 1891. CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE I. THE LAND - - - I II. THE VEGETATION AND ANIMALS - 1 8 III. THE PEOPLE - - - - - 62 IV. THE DAILY LIFE OF THE PEOPLE - - - 107 V. THE CLIMATE AND DISEASES - - - 1 42 VI. THE TRAVELLER - - - 152 VII. A DAY'S MARCH - - - 1 87 VIII. THE SLAVE-TRADE - - - 208 IX. THE SLAVE - - - 233 X. THE ARAB - - - - 249 XI. THE MISSIONARY - - - 263 xii. THE MISSIONARY {continued) - 289 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS PAGE PORTRAIT OF SIR C. B. EUAN-SMITH, K.C.B. - Frontispiece GERMAN AND BRITISH COASTS 4 VILLAGE IN USAGARA - - - - 8 MAP OF ELEVATIONS - - - 1 6 BAOBOB-TREE - - - - - 19 GUN-TRAP - - - 34 ANTELOPE HUNTED PA 7 DOGS - - 38 HORNBILL ----- - 47 THE MANTIS - - - - "55 AFRICAN SMITHY - - - - 78 HOE, AXE, BILLHOOK, ETC. - " " 79 HOOKAH ... ... 85 SPEARS AND KN< tBKERRIES - - - 89 OBTAINING SAP FROM THE COCOANUT-TREE - - 105 >;an"jo - - - - - 106 I EMBES IN rc.OGO - - - - - Il8 THE ESPLANADE, ZANZIBAR ... - 162 PAYING POSHO - - - - - 172 ARAK KILLING \ WORN-OUT SLAVE - - 220 MAP OF THE SLAVE-TRADE .... 226 HOUSES FOR EUROPEANS ----- 279 HUTS FOR SICK NATIVES - - - - 307 The Arab and the African CHAPTER I THE LAND The tropical Africa of our childhood, with its un- known interior and imaginary sandy wastes stretch- ing from sea to sea, is a thing of the past, and in its place we have a country containing great lakes and magnificent rivers ; whilst the maps which depict it are traversed by scores of lines, the routes of the soldier, the missionary and the explorer. Yet, not- withstanding all these advances, but few of us realize the home-life of the people, or rather peoples, of Central Africa, or understand the wide - reaching inclusive nature of the political system known as slavery, and the insurmountable barrier which it presents to the missionary and the trader. An Englishman cannot grasp what is included under that one term ' slavery ' unless he first i 2 The Land understands the people, and to understand them he needs to know the country. Slavery is no such simple system as we of the West are apt to under- stand by the term. It is not solely a question of the brutal Arab, with his semi-civilization, lording it over and ill-treating the innocent and ingenuous occupier of the soil. The Arab has right, as well as wrong, on his side. The system of slavery has its advantages few and far between, as well as its disadvantages many and frequent, some glaring and evident, others unknown and unsuspected. As a whole, the system is detestable — the slave-dealer is frequently brutal ; the slave often ill - treated. Yet, if we examine the matter fairly, we shall see that the dealer has something to say on his own behalf — has some points in his favour which we have no right to overlook, however much we may rightly abhor and condemn the system ; and that the slave is not always to be pitied, and must some- times be condemned — and none the less condemned, because on many points he ought to be sympathised with and helped, and, above all things, freed. It would be a glorious deed to abolish African slavery in the century which gave birth to Livingstone, and saw him spend his life in the noble endeavour to heal the open sore of the world ; but a deed which English Slave-traders 3 we shall never hasten by shutting our eyes to the defects of the slave or the good points of the Arab. The Eastern mind resents injustice fiercely ; and in our condemnation of the slave-trade, we of the West are in danger of being unjust to the Arabs through insufficient knowledge of the conditions of life that prevail in Central Africa. It may help us perhaps to judge the Arab more justly, and with more of sorrow than anger, if we recollect that England has been one of the greatest of slave- trading nations ; and that even in the present century English enterprise and English capital have largely contributed to the maintenance of this traffic. Tropical Africa is the great cradle of the slave-trade, and for a century it has been very largely at the mercy of the Arab ; but now the European has begun to step in, and its eastern half has become the sphere of operation of three great companies — two British companies to the north and to the south, with a German one between them. It is to this eastern half that our attention is to be directed. As the traveller steams northward along the eastern coast from the southern limit of the dominions of the Sultan of Zanzibar, he notices 1 — 2 4 The Land the low-lying region that skirts the Indian Ocean ; whilst lying behind, more or less dim in the per- petual African haze, he sees a range of hills, replaced in some parts by gently - rising ground. This marshy coast-line, malarious and deadly, which at Bagamoyo is about ten miles wide, becomes narrowed at Saadani, opposite the town of Zanzibar, to four miles, and finally terminates north of this before reaching Pangani, from which point north- wards the coast rises abruptly in coral limestone rocks to a height of fifty feet or more. Thus the British company, whose territory does not reach so far south as Pangani, has no marshy coast-line, no unhealthy ports. Behind the marsh to the south, and behind the shore to the north, the land rises by a gradual slope of eighty miles to a height of about fifteen hundred feet, from which, in the German region, stretches the first or coast plateau for eighty miles inland, in many parts broken up by spurs of the adjacent mountain-range, but in others extending for many days' march together in an almost unbroken level, with scenery not unlike that of the fen-country at home. It is a continuous swamp all through the rainy season, a monotonous plain in the dry one, traversed by a few large streams, and consequently The Great Mountain Range 5 better covered with vegetation than most parts. Having crossed this plain, the traveller is confronted by precipitous rocks, and a march or climb of eighty miles over rugged passes from four to five thousand feet above the sea-level, and along the sides of steep inclines, takes him over a narrowed portion of the great mountain-range which stretches in an almost unbroken chain from the Cape of Good Hope to Abyssinia. Once across this range, he is landed on the second or great plateau of Central Africa, which stretches across the Continent at an elevation of three to four thousand feet. A very striking feature is this mountain-chain, sharply cutting off the lower coast plateau and rising ground from the great central plain of the Continent, and leaving each flank with features peculiar to itself. Like the low - lying coast - region, the first or narrow plateau, which is eighty miles wide in the German region, gradually narrows to unimportant dimensions as it passes northwards into the British district, being encroached upon by the great moun- tain-chain, which here widens its flanks, preparatory to rising in terrace after terrace to the clouds, and then piercing through and towering far above them in the giant hills of Kenia and Kilimanjaro. Hitherto Bagamoyo and Saadani have been the 6 The Land ports from which most of the traffic has been carried on with the interior, along the great slave- routes stretching from these points to the ports on Tanganyika and Victoria Nyanza. ' Roads ' they are called, but the term ' paths ' would more cor- rectly convey their condition to the Western mind ; for they are only narrow tracks from nine to fifteen inches wide, bared of vegetation by the frequent tramping of naked feet, but as uneven as when originally made. As the traveller marches from Saadani westwards, he leaves at once behind him the two-storied" houses of the coast and the tropical -looking cocoanut- palms ; and soon there is little to remind him that he has left his Western home so far away. He walks through continual woodland, not unlike the outskirts of Epping Forest in the late autumn, except for an occasional cactus-like euphorbia ; a baobob, looking for all the world like a tree put in the wrong way up ; or a still more occasional wild banana or fan-palm. Here and there at long intervals he comes upon some evidently better- watered spot than usual— perhaps upon some long low valley amongst the hills, where typical tropical trees are thicker and more frequent, with an abundance of rank grass and undergrowth amongst Native Villages y them, giving the whole scene the appearance of one of our English country parks run wild. On the first plateau, as we have noticed, there are a few large rocky streams, along whose banks rise fine and shady trees ; but elsewhere all up the hill and mountain sides, and in unending succession along the plains, come forest after forest of low scrub or dwarfed thorn -trees, whose spiny leaves and scanty foliage give little shelter from the tropical sun ; mile after mile of shadeless forest, a mono- tonous sameness broken only by the occasional euphorbia or baobob ; with a few scanty flowers and still fewer fruits, bitter and acid, or tasteless. At intervals of about ten miles from each other, and therefore, for porters with loads, at about a day's march distant, come villages, all constructed much in the same way. A double fence surrounds the village, and between the two fences, which are some ten yards apart, are tall shrubs and small trees. There are one or two entrances through the shrubbery, guarded at either end by narrow door- ways, which can be easily blocked. Inside are the houses, low, circular huts of wickerwork and mud, with thatched roofs ; seldom over twenty houses in a village, sometimes not a dozen. Near the villages the ground is mostly cultivated, millet-seed, Indian corn, 8 The Land sweet potatoes, beans, pumpkins, and tobacco form- ing the staple products ; cassava, sugar-cane, rice, bananas, papaye, guavas, limes, and ground-nuts the exceptional ones. The uncultivated ground is used for grazing cattle, goats, a few sheep, and a very occasional donkey, besides which innumerable fowls pick up a scanty living. On the coast-plateau, how- ever, there are hardly any cattle, as the tsetse fly holds almost undisputed sway over the whole of this belt of land. The tsetse is an insect in shape and size like an ordinary house-fly, and in colour not unlike the bee, with three or four dull-yellow bars across the back of the abdomen. This fly attacks man and animal indiscriminately, but the bite is dangerous only to some of the latter. We were frequently badly bitten by this little pest, which is very rapid in its movements, and very persistent in returning to the victim it has commenced to attack. It is only in the cool of the early morning, or in the late even- ing, before it has retired to its well-earned rest, that the lower temperature seems to partially benumb it, and render it an easy prey to the wrath of its victim. When it alights, the tsetse inserts its long proboscis into the skin of its victim, a somewhat painful pro- ceeding, which, however, has no apparent effect beyond the transient pain of the insertion, except in < < < t—i a o < The Tsetse Fly 9 the case of horses, cattle, and dogs, and occasionally donkeys. When one of these animals has been bitten, it does not suffer at first ; and if it be in good health, it may not show any symptoms for a week or ten days, but at the end of this time it begins to refuse its food, and to fail in health. The first symptoms are variable, but usually flaccidity of muscles, and, consequently, a staggering walk are amongst the earliest. Next blindness ensues from commencing opacity in the internal media of the eye, the whole eye presenting a semi-transparent greenish appearance. If the animal lives long enough, the fact that it is suffering from true blood-poisoning will be made evident by the appearance of abscesses in many of its joints, which enlarge quickly, but which do not appear to cause it much pain. The streams of this plateau are not many in number, and are all fordable, most of them being only one or two feet deep. The fish in them are said to be few and small, but I have never seen a specimen, so cannot vouch for the truth of this statement. I do not think fishing can be much practised, as, though I took a great many fishhooks up country with me for barter, I never managed to dispose of one. Apparently, the crocodile and the hippopotamus are the only inhabitants of these io The Land waters. The former do not seem dangerous to people, to adults, at least, but are so to goats and dogs. The European must look sharply after his dogs, or they may be snapped up, as they are not so wary as the native dog, who, when he goes to drink, first looks carefully this way and that before ventur- ing to slake his thirst. The European dog has no such instinct, but boldly plunges in ; he likes not only to drink, but to lie down in the shallow waters, and cool his burning skin, and unfortunately the crocodile likes to do the same. Along these same rivers grow ferns which cannot flourish in the drier districts. Up amongst the hill - streams different varieties of maiden-hair are common ; here, too, are orchids, which, abounding in East Africa, naturally grow more plentifully on the well-foliaged trees, which are only to be found along the river sides. In the wet season the ground is swampy for miles along the plateau, but during the dry season many of the smaller streams are empty, and water can only be obtained by digging in their beds wells of a depth which it is necessary gradually to increase as the dry months pass by. At one place where we camped towards the end of the dry season, the natives had to dig fifteen feet below the river bed before they struck water. Again, in the wet season, such A Marshy District 1 1 is the abundance of water under the surface every- where that it sends up a mist in the mornings un- known in the drier regions of the central plateau. I remember on one occasion some Wagogo from the dry and almost waterless region of Ugogo, who were coming down to the coast for the first time, were amazed beyond measure to see the sun look a reddish-yellow through the early morning mist, a condition absolutely unknown to them in the whole of their experience. No one could persuade them that it was not the moon, and it was not until it rose far above the horizon, and the mists began to disap- pear, that they were convinced that we had not been endeavouring to impose upon them. The smell from these swampy districts is at times quite sickening ; but for pungency of odour and really disgusting fcetor, there is nothing to equal that resulting from the first rains, which at the end of a dry season begin to soak into, and thereby decom- pose, the accumulated surface refuse of months. Wild animals are plentiful all along this plateau, but they are much more plentiful and varied in the hills, and will be better considered in the descrip- tion of those regions. After eighty miles of the dead level we have been describing, the traveller reaches the commencement 1 2 The Land of the great mountain range, and now for another eighty miles his way lies over hill after hill, bare rugged paths across the sharp granite and quartz rocks, and still through unending forest. Here he is amongst the Wasagara, and gradually the style of huts begins to change. At first he sees the usual villages, but with only a single surrounding fence, perched on the top of ridges or conical eminences or other commanding situations for safety ; but these graduallygive place to the well-known buildings called ' tembes,' the regulation house or hut of Central Africa. These tembes are all alike, except in size. Each consists of a kind of covered passage built round a square courtyard. The passages are built of stout, upright poles, less than six feet high, with strong wickerwork in between, the interstices being filled in with mud. The doors are also constructed of stout wickerwork, and slide clumsily from side to side. The upright poles are so short that an ordinary- sized man cannot stand upright inside. I think the natives do not stay indoors much ; indeed, there is not much to tempt them to do so, the huts being very stuffy in dry weather, while in wet weather they let in the rain. Each passage is sub-divided by incomplete partitions of strong wickerwork, and several families live in one tembe, having each of Mpwapwa i o them two or three divisions, as not only they, but all their herds come inside at night for protection from the wild animals. Once over this range the traveller finds himself on the grand plateau, and begins to realize that he is truly in Central Africa, cut off from even the semi-civili- zation of Zanzibar, and in an altogether new world. By far the most important village along the western flank of the range is Mpwapwa, the great junction for the trade routes, or in other words for the slave routes, of Eastern Equatorial Africa. Many routes converge here from the Victoria Nyanza and Tanganyika, and diverge again as they pass eastward to the different ports on the East African Coast. Stanley, in his ' Dark Continent,' describes Mpwapwa as lying in ' a deep indentation in the great mountain chain that extends from Abyssinia, or even Suez, down to the Cape of Good Hope.' This indentation is about twenty miles deep, and does not by any means cut through the ridge ; the hill of Mpwapwa standing boldly up as the Eastern rampart against the encroaching plain. This great undulating plain, the central plateau of which we have been speaking, formed locally of red sands and clay, reaches in one unbroken level to the shores of Tanganyika and the Victoria Nyanza ; whilst the 14 The Land gentle declivities down the valleys of the Nile and Congo give it an exit to the Mediterranean and Atlantic. Hence it is that swallows which leave our coasts in October can pass up the Nile and across the great plain to Mpwapwa and other villages at the base of the mountain chain, where they stay until February. Numbers of them reach this western flank, but none ever pass further east. I have lived amongst the hills only four miles east of Mpwapwa for an entire winter without ever seeing a single swallow there, although each time that I crossed the hill to Mpwapwa, I saw them in numbers. As a rule the same variety of bird is common to the greater part of the central plateau ; for instance the same varieties occur at Mpwapwa and on the shores of Tanganyika and the Victoria Nyanza ; whilst varieties which abound in Zanzibar and on the East coast are much less common on the plateau. There are, however, exceptions to this rule, as many birds do not seem to find the hills, with their many passes at an elevation of only five thousand feet, any real barrier. This mountain chain, as has been mentioned before, abounds in game of all kinds, the descriptions of which will come more naturally in the Chapter on Animals. I know no one familiar with the western flank of The German Territory 15 the chain higher up in the German and English districts, but I expect the description of the country round about Mpwapwa answers fairly well for the flank further north. The difference between the British and German districts appears to be caused by the varying width of the mountain chain. The coast swamp which is such a feature in the German is wanting in the British territory. The marshy coast plateau, which is something under one hundred miles wide in the German, almost disappears in the English territory, encroached upon, as we have seen, by the widening eastern flanks of Kilimanjaro and Kenia. The high tableland of the great central plateau is also pushed further westward towards the north, encroached upon in the same way by the western flanks of these great mountains. With the presence of the marshy plateau, the Germans have also a monopoly of the tsetse fly, which is absent, I believe in the British territory, or at the worst, exists only in a narrow belt, easily passable in one night, and is therefore avoidable by caravans passing through. The annexed map represents the difference be- tween the two districts ; but very diagrammatically. From the regions which I have visited myself in the southern German territory, and from the descriptions i6 The Land given me by friends who have travelled in the northern portions of the German and in the English territories, it seems evident that the features of the country are much the same in any latitude where Tyfo. Etching Co. St the same elevation is reached. Thus the features of the incline are the same whether north or south, and so are the features of the central plateau. But although it is east and west not north and south Gold 1 7 that really determines the different features, yet the narrowing of some districts from east to west in different latitudes completely alters the conditions existing north and south, when Eastern Equatorial Africa is considered as a whole. The German physical districts are all, with the exception of the coast marsh, represented in the English territory, and vice versa ; but the districts which are wide in one are narrow in the other, hence the marked dif- ference north and south, and hence also, the marked superiority of the British over the German territory. The mountain chain at the latitude of Mpwapwa, which abounds in granite, gneiss, schists and serpen- tine, is also rich in metals, amongst which I believe I have seen gold in the quartz not far from Mpwapwa. After finding much pyrites, the German in com- mand at Mpwapwa, Herr Krieger (who was killed soon afterwards by the Arabs at Kilwa, to which port he had been sent to take charge of it), showed me a specimen of what I thought at the time was native gold, and examination of museum specimens since my return to England has convinced me that it was really so. The formation being the same, there is, I suppose, a probability of gold being dis- covered in the same chain further north in British territory. CHAPTER II THE VEGETATION AND ANIMALS After leaving the coast, the first feature in the landscape that strikes the European is, as mentioned in the last chapter, the similarity of the vegetation to that met with at home, especially in districts where conifers predominate. At the coast itself, and on the adjacent islands, the palms, baobobs, mangoes, oranges, limes, cloves, bananas, pine- apples, and jack-fruit give the landscape a truly tropical appearance, quite unlike that with which the dweller in temperate climes is familiar ; but elsewhere all this changes, and there are few edible fruits, the natives of the interior paying little or no attention to their culture. In a very few villages the banana, the papaye, and the guava are culti- vated ; and in one or two isolated spots where the Arab or European has settled, he has brought seeds or cuttings, and planted a few other fruit-trees. Tamarinds, wild grapes, and species of wild cherry Scanty Fruits 19 and wild mango are not uncommon ; but they are not very acceptable to the European palate, nor do they appear to be prized even by the native. This absence of fruit of any kind is very trying to the BA0I50B TREE traveller in such a hot climate, and almost as trying is the want of colour to refresh the eye. A few flowering aloes, and flowers of the order Solanaceae or Atropacea 1 are very abundant ; but except in the 20 The Vegetation and Animals depth of the rainy season when creepers abound everywhere, there is not much other floral display. Orchids, though far from uncommon, are unobtrusive in the localities they select, and very quiet in ap- pearance. There is, in fact, nothing of that wealth and brilliancy of colour that one naturally associates with the tropics. Most of the hills are covered with short trees, amongst which acacias predominate, whilst gigantic baobobs stand out prominently here and there. The larger trees, amongst which the fig-sycamores are the most conspicuous, prefer the plains, especially the sides of the streams. It is here, too, that the ebony-tree is so abundant, and in some districts the indiarubber-tree. Higher up, the brush and scrub are usually very close and well interspersed with thorn bushes bearing thorns from one to three inches long, a quite impenetrable thicket in many places except to knife and hatchet. It is in these hillside fastnesses that the wild beasts repose by day, and, except when pressed by hunger, rarely leave them until the sun has set, and the short twilight has been followed by the dim light of the stars, or the more brilliant but by no means exposing light of even a tropical moon. The leopards especially have the credit of selecting these hillside fastnesses for their lairs : a fact referred to Abundant Game 21 by Solomon, ' Come with me from the lions' dens, from the mountains of the leopards.' The district around and near Mpwapwa, and, I believe, all along the range, abounds in lion, leopard, hyena, rhino- ceros, elephant, giraffe, buffalo, zebra, antelope, eland, gazelle, monkey, wild boar, porcupine, coney, jackal, serval, genet, mongoose, civet cat, and other small carnivora. In the small lakes near and among the hills there are also hippopotamus and crocodile. In the frequent visits which at one time I used to pay to Kisokwe, a village seven miles from Mpwapwa, where I was living, I had to walk five miles across a plain, three of the miles being along a well-worn caravan path through the jungle. Going by night it was a rare thing to see wild animals except hyenas, as they all seem to shun proximity to man ; but, returning in the morning, my native boy often showed me the tracks of the different animals which had crossed our path the night before. It was some time before I learned to distinguish the different footprints myself, and to the last I could not recog- nise them with anything like the facility which the natives showed in doing it. The hyenas are the animals most frequently seen and heard. Sometimes they can be heard soon 22 The Vegetation and Animals <5 after sunset, and they whine at intervals through the night. About three in the morning the whining becomes more frequent, and alters in character ; they are calling to each other to go home, the natives say. Then it becomes more and more distant, and finally ceases ; and the hyenas have returned to their homes before the first rays of the dawn. I never so fully realised before the descrip- tion in the Psalms : ' Thou makest darkness and it is night, wherein all the beasts of the forests do creep forth. The young lions roar after their prey, and seek their meat from God. The sun .ariseth ; they get them away, and lay them down in their dens. Man goeth forth unto his work, and to his labour until the evening.' This last sentence exactly describes one's hours in Central Africa. I frequently travelled by night to avoid the hot sun, yet rarely met a native. I only once went a long walk by night alone, though there is very little if any danger of being attacked, the wild beasts have such a dread of man. I suppose it is that man's original dominion over animals still survives to a large extent ' over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.' I have heard that a variety of leopard sometimes attacks man ; but could hear of no instance of it. Also that the man-eating lion does ; if so, he certainly is a A Rogue Buffalo 23 rarity in Central Africa. A rogue buffalo certainly does occasionally, like one that attacked a friend of mine, Mr. Cole, of Kisokwe. But even this instance can hardly be quoted as an unprovoked attack, as the animal in question certainly had its privacy rudely intruded upon. The people at Kisokwe were in great want of meat, and Cole had gone out one evening hoping to be able to bring home some game. After searching for some time he saw an antelope at a distance, and commenced to stalk it. Being an accomplished hunter, he succeeded in getting well within range without attracting the animal's attention ; but in doing so he executed a feat which must be almost unparalleled in the annals of hunting. So cautiously did he approach through the long grass that he was unnoticed by a buffalo lying down in it ; and so intent was he on his expected game, that, unknown to himself, he stalked right up to the buffalo, and stood just in front of its head, with his back to it. In a second the astonished animal was on its feet, and the sound brought Cole sharply round ; but so close were the two, that although Cole's gun was at full-cock, before he could shoot the buffalo had caught him on the back, and he and his gun parted company as they went flying through the air. A second and a third time did the 24 The Vegetation and Animals infuriated animal gore and toss him before he could realise his position and restrain his shouts. Then he lay motionless and quiet feigning death, but ex- pecting every moment that he would be tossed again. However, the buffalo stood eyeing him for a few minutes ; and then, half satisfied that its work was done, trotted off and stood again to watch its work at a short distance, finally disappearing in the jungle ; whilst Cole's native boy, a frightened spec- tator of what had been happening, ran to the house two miles away, and brought assistance. I think most people's respect for the -king of beasts is very much diminished when they come to live in his neighbourhood. When you come across one, he almost invariably makes off, and it is safer to let him go, unless you are a very true shot, or have several armed natives with you, as a wounded lion is a dangerous animal to deal with. I remember Herr Krieger, the German in com- mand of the furthest station in the interior, coming, one day, very unexpectedly upon a lion. He was shooting quail, and had just emptied both barrels and started in pursuit of a wounded bird. In the pursuit he jumped into a shallow pit or trench, and as he did so, a terrified lioness, who had been enjoy- Man-eating Lions 25 ing a nap, jumped out and disappeared. He was relieved to see her go, as his gun was unloaded. A friend of mine told me that, on one of his marches, he came upon a lion a short distance from the path. One of the men went off to have a shot at it, which only irritated the animal, who pursued him with great leaps and bounds, as he rushed shouting back to the caravan ; but on getting nearer the body of men, the lion evidently con- sidered discretion the better part of valour, and acted accordingly. In South Africa and in the North there are, I believe, man-eating lions ; but in Central Africa I doubt if such exist. I never came across a single authentic instance of one, though I frequently made inquiries for the purpose of ascertaining the truth or falsehood of the stories I had heard on the sub- ject. Occasionally I heard of a village being depo- pulated by lions, but the depopulating process always turned out to be not such a bloody affair as it sounded. On one occasion we camped in such a depopulated, deserted village. I asked some natives belonging to the place, who happened to be passing that day, how man}- of their people the lions had killed ? ' None,' they replied. 26 The Vegetation and Animals ' But I thought the lions had driven you from here ?' ' Yes,' was the answer ; ' they came every night and eat our cows and goats, and we were being starved out, so we had to go elsewhere.' On another occasion I was camping with my wife and child on the banks of the Rocky River. It was a brilliant moonlight night, and our donkeys were tied up in the open village, which was not stockaded. Towards midnight a lion stalked them from the hills. He came past our tent within a few yards of it, and was nearly within reach of them, when they scented him, and at once began to roar, as only frightened donkeys can, and woke the men. The lion, alarmed at his approach being made such a public matter, turned tail and disappeared in the jungle. Next night we tied up the donkeys in a clearing in the jungle outside the village — a very exposed, unprotected spot — in hopes that the lion would give us a chance of shooting him ; but his majesty was not to be tempted ; so we saw no more of him. A good donkey is an easy match for a hyena or a leopard, and can with safety be left outside at nights in districts where there are no lions. A leopard knows well that a donkey, like an English Donkey versus Leopard 27 football player, is generally a good kick, and prefers to give him a wide berth ; but a lion has the courage to attack a donkey though not quite in the style one gathers from story books. In them, the lion is supposed to march up to the donkey, give him a pat on his back, and then eat him. But a donkey has a soul above being patted on the back by a lion or any other animal, and if a lion offered to do so, would most certainly kick him in the ribs. One night at a village near me, a lion killed a donkey belonging to a friend of mine, leaving most of the body. Next night my friend prepared to sit up in a tree and shoot him when he came to finish the body; so shortly after dusk he went with a candle to a selected tree close to the donkey's remains, whilst his men followed with his guns. Just as he reached the spot, there was his majesty commencing his evening meal. The guns were a short distance behind, so my friend could not shoot him ; whilst the lion, catching sight of him, dis- appeared as quickly as he could. The lion had returned earlier than my friend expected ; but per- haps lions always return soon after dusk to save their prey from the hyenas, as they cannot climb like leopards, and so like them place their unfinished 28 The Vegetation and Animals prey for safety in the tops of the trees. It was in the top of a tree in my garden, that one morning I found the remains of a pet terrier, which had been left in my care. It was my custom to leave the terrier loose at nights, and he slept on the veranda with my mastiffs, no leopard or hyena daring to approach a little dog so befriended. But having taken the mastiffs to a village some distance off, at which I was staying for the night. I ordered the terrier to be shut up in an outhouse for safety. Unfortunately he broke loose in the night, and ran to his accustomed place on the veranda, where the leopard, finding him alone, seized the oppor- tunity to carry him off and kill him. Next night four of us sat up in some broken-down huts round the tree, and waited for him. Soon after midnight we heard a tin bowl rattling on the veranda some hundred yards away, and guessed that the leopard was looking to see if there was another unprotected dog. Finding nothing, he evidently made for the tree at once, as presently we heard a grunt in the cassava plantation between our huts and the house, and in another moment a fine leopard appeared at the foot of the tree. He gave one look at a large trap which we had placed in his way, decided that it was not intended for him, and clearing a second Leopard and Mastiffs 29 trap eight feet up the tree, at one bound landed amongst the upper branches. We now rushed out from our hiding-places, and surrounded the tree; but it was a minute or two before we could get a shot at him, as, the moment a gun was aimed at him, he dodged round to the other side of the trunk; but he could not avoid four guns, and very soon he paused for a second to decide what next to do, and, as he did so, two bullets through his heart brought him to the ground. One evening, on my first journey up-country, as I was stopping at a mission-station, my boy had care- lessly chained up my mastiffs on the veranda at dusk instead of taking them straight to the out- h >use as he ought to have done ; for they were young then, and were not left to look after them- selves at night. Suddenly a leopard, who had evidently smelt dog from below, and no doubt expected to find one of the half-starved little native dogs which abound everywhere, jumped up in between them. There he stood, perfectly motion- less with surprise, on his first introduction to the British mastiff. He was not left long to decide what to do; for one dog got him by the head, the other by the tail, and the two quickly bowled him over. He lay perfectly still, astonished at the t,o The Vegetation and Animals unexpected turn which events had taken ; whilst the dogs, evidently puzzled at his quiet behaviour, simply held him there and growled, but offered him no further violence. Before the men who had been standing near could return with their guns, the leopard had taken advantage of the dogs' indecision to suddenly wriggle away and disappear in the darkness, leaving them without even a scratch. A leopard will risk a good deal to get a dog, but a kid he seems quite unable to resist. A friend told me that one once jumped into his kitchen through the window after dawn, and pulled out a kid. At the same station whilst I was there another burst open the door of the hut in which two of the mission-men were sleeping, caught up a little kid that was just inside, and hastily retreated. I see now the force of associating these two animals in the verse, ' The leopard shall lie down with the kid.' One moonlight night I saw a leopard stalk his prey. He had crept up the long garden to behind an aloe, a few yards from where a puppy was sleep- ing close to the window of my bedroom. He was ready for his final spring, when the mastiff, who was hidden in the shade, caught sight of him ; and a second later the leopard was tearing down the The Cunning of the Leopard 31 garden with the mastiff a few feet from his tail. However, he outran the dog, and escaped over the fence. Leopards are such very cunning animals that it is by no means easy to successfully snare or shoot them. They are more cunning by far than hyenas ; but their habit of skulking about buildings and out- houses at dusk in search of prey, and their con- fidence in their own powers of eluding capture by cunning or rapidity of movement, brings them in far closer contact with their human enemy, and consequently they are more often killed or captured than the less cunning, but far more shy and timid, hyena. I remember seeing a trap set by a friend of mine for a leopard. He had built a hut of very strong timberwork interwoven with thorns ; and leaving the door of this open, he placed a steel trap under the doorway quite concealed by grass and leaves. In the hut an inviting young kid was tied up, who soon attracted the leopard by his bleating when night began. The leopard, however, contrary to expectation, declined to enter by the door, which he evidently considered lay open in a suspiciously ostentatious manner, but instead, with his power- ful paws smashed through the walls of the hut, 32 The Vegetation and Animals howling aloud all the time with the pain caused by the thorns, yet persevering until he had made a sufficient opening by which to withdraw the kid, when he instantly made off with his booty. It is useless to endeavour to kill a leopard by exposing poisoned meat, as he will not be tempted by food which he has not killed himself; but he may be poisoned, none the less, by a method which some German colonists near us devised. A kid was very firmly tied up near the house, and left out for the night. Before long his violent bleating and struggles disclosed the fact that he was -being at- tacked ; whereupon a rush was made for the place with lights, and sure enough his mangled body was found not yet wrenched away from its fastenings by the leopard which had killed him. Strychnine was then well rubbed into the wounds, and the body left ; and next morning the body of the leopard was found close to the carcase of the kid, which bore traces of having been still further mangled, and partially devoured. Another plan is to tie up a goat at night near a window which is in the shade, and wait for the leopard ; but he will not approach on a moonlight night, whilst on a moonless starlit one it is very difficult to follow his rapid movements. The whole Wary Hyenas 3 3 matter is over in one or two seconds — one bound brings the leopard out of the darkness, and a few seconds suffice him to kill the goat, and wrench as much of it away as he dare stay for, with the odour of the hidden watcher so perceptibly strong — hardly time for the watcher to collect his wits, especially if he has been watching for several hours. But the most satisfactory plan is a gun-trap set in the track of the animal at night, when the blackened string becomes quite invisible. Hyenas are so wary of approaching man that it is difficult to get a shot at them. Almost the only occasions are when you come suddenly upon them when walking through the jungle on a moonlight night. Even then one needs to be a very good shot to hit them before they have disappeared. Several times I have come upon them suddenly in this way, but usually when I had no gun. Once I was riding through the jungle at dusk, when three hyenas — who had evidently smelt the donkey, but not me — jumped out on to the path a few yards ahead. I felt very uncomfortable, as I had no gun, and did not then know the habits of these animals. They quickly disappeared when they discovered that there was a man as well as a donkey; but I could hear them howling near for some time after, and I 0* -< H I O Hoiv Hyenas can be Poisoned 35 was not sorry when I found myself safe back in my own compound. Though not easily shot, troublesome hyenas can usually be got rid of by poisoning. Any garbage rubbed with strychnine will answer the purpose. Unless the dead body used is a large one, it is necessary to fasten it securely, as by nailing it to a tree, otherwise the hyena will carry off the tempting- morsel to devour it at his leisure in his own home, and so his skin will be lost, and there will not even be the certainty that he has been killed. On one occasion I exposed some goat's meat, well rubbed with strychnine, to get rid of some civet cats who were paying our hen-roosts nightly visits. The first morning after, the meat was found gnawed, and the dead body of a civet cat close by. The next morning the meat was again found gnawed, and the marks were those of a small carnivor, but no civet cat could be found, though the amount eaten left no doubt that the animal must have died close by, and probably had been carried off by a hyena, who in his turn would also have died, but at a distance, as the poison was in a diluted form; so we searched for his body, but without result, until after a few days the progress of decomposition caused an odour which betrayed its position, not only to us, 3—2 36 The Vegetation and A?iimals but also a night or two later to some other hyenas, who thereupon made a meal of the remains of their brother, but whether or no with fatal results, I never ascertained. Nearly all the injuries from wild animals that I saw whilst in Africa were caused by hyenas. These animals prowl around every camp, and if they come upon a man asleep away from his camp fire, will at once pounce upon him, secure one mouthful — and a very satisfying mouthful it usually is — and rush away. I remember one hot night while a number of boys were sleeping on the veranda of a Mission House, a hyena came in and seized one of the smallest boys by his elbow, and was making off with him, when with great presence of mind he raised the war-cry. At once others came to his rescue, and he was saved, but not before his elbow-bones had been torn out. However, he made a very good recovery. Another time a boy was brought to me who was suffering from small-pox, and who whilst in this condition, lying in some exposed place at night, had his ankle badly crushed by a bite from the same powerful jaws ; and I have occasionally seen people with part of their cheeks or their ears gone. Cowardly though they are, hyenas will sometimes follow alone behind people at night in the hope Hunting Dogs 37 that they will lie down. They are said sometimes to follow, walking for short distances at a time on their hind legs, and I believe this is really the case. On one occasion I was walking unarmed at night from a native servant's house to my own, a distance of about fifty yards. As I walked down the sloping path I heard bare feet come pattering after me, and, turning round, said, to what I supposed was the servant, ' What do you want, Richard ?' My heart stood still, as the only answer I received was the sound of a jump made by some large animal, and a plunge and crash into the bushes by the side of the stream, close to which I was walking. The animal was probably a hyena ; had it been a leopard it would have slunk off more quietly. The hyenas are occasionally called wolves by travellers, but there are no wolves in Central Africa. Hyenas, jackals, and hunting-dogs, especially the latter, take their place. The hunting-dogs are large dogs that hunt in packs, and when pressed by hunger will, it is said, attack even man. Certainly they will do so in self-defence. Their method of hunting is very interesting. Having scented their game, perhaps an antelope, they surround him in a large circle and gradually close in upon him, taking advantage of every bit of cover that offers o 8 The Vegetation and Animals itself to keep out of his sight. Presently he dis- covers one of his enemies, and at once prepares to make off in an opposite direction, when a sharp bark immediately in front of him pulls him suddenly up, and an attempt to alter his course and escape by another way is checked in the same manner. At last he gets frantic, and makes a rush, unheeding the barks in front of him ; but by this time the whole circle have closed in, and one or two have got their fangs into him. He shakes them off; they have delayed, not stopped him, and he rushes away again ; but the delay has given time for others to get ahead of him, and again he is seized, and again, until finally he succumbs to his many enemies, who in an hour will have left nothing of him but his larger bones for the hyenas who will scour the ground that night. I never once saw a hippopotamus or rhinoceros, but occasionally came across the tracks of the latter. The natives are much afraid of the rhinoceros ; in fact, he and the solitary buffalo are far more dreaded than the lion, as these do occasionally attack man unprovoked, though as a rule, they are not very formidable foes, and with care can be hunted with- out any great danger. The rhinoceros is chiefly hunted for its horns, the buffalo for both skin and horns, as the natives make sandals, which are much o Q >< M C a H 5C 5 Z < A Native Elephant Hunt 39 prized for their toughness, out of buffalo -hide. The hippopotamus is hunted more especially for its teeth, many tons of which are annually sent to Europe, and there sold as an inferior quality of ivory for knife-handles and suchlike purposes. The hippo- potamus is generally trapped, a heavily-weighted spear being suspended over its run, and a cord so arranged across the path, that when it is displaced by the foot of the animal, the spear is released, and plunges into its back, the animal going off not far away to die from the bleeding, which enables the hunter who has set the trap to track his victim to its death-place. Elephants roam the forests in many districts, but they seem to be most plentiful north-east of Uganda, in the district first explored by Count Teleky, so that the best hunting-ground and the approaches to it are now in the hands of the Imperial British East Africa Company. A hunter, who lived on Lake Xyassa, told me that the natives about there go out in parties of about twenty armed with old muskets to hunt the elephant. Having sighted their game, they cautiously creep up to within a few yards of him, and then, all firing together, give him a regular broadside. But the aim is so bad, and the penetra- tion of their missiles so feeble, that the elephant 40 The Vegetation and Animals usually escapes with nothing worse than a dozen skin-wounds. In the districts where I have lived, poisoned arrows are always used in elephant-hunt- ing ; but I could not find out exactly what was the poison used ; apparently it was a mixture of several ingredients, which included cobra poison and some vegetable extract. The teeth of the African elephant are so different from those of the Indian species, that I was very much surprised one day in the interior to come upon some teeth which undoubtedly came from the Indian. The phenomenon was explained soon after, by dis- covering that the Belgian expedition into the interior of Africa had been supplied with elephants as carriers by the Indian Government, and had lost one of them by death at this place. Antelope are the most common of all the beasts of the field, from the graceful, tiny gazelle, no larger than an Italian greyhound, to the splendid sikiro, or koodoo, as he is called in South Africa, as large as a good-sized horse. They used to come into our garden every night, and it was some time before I recognised their cry, which is so like the loud deep bark of a large dog, that most Europeans mistake it for that at first. Monkeys are to be seen by thousands, but they Nocturnal Habits 41 keep so cunningly hidden amongst the foliage, that it takes a stranger some time to discover them. He may live there for some months hardly seeing one, and suddenly he will learn where to look for them, and will see them perhaps every day after that. They were a great nuisance in the garden when the maize began to ripen ; whole troops constantly invaded the place, one monkey being always sent to occupy a conspicuous place, from which he gave timely warning to the others of the approach of danger; he never joined himself in collecting the spoil, so I supposed that the native statement, that he receives his share afterwards, must be correct. An animal allied to the monkey which is fairly plentiful, but on account of its nocturnal habits, not often seen, is a variety of lemur, the loris, or potto, I am not sure which. Sir Charles Bell, in his Treatise on the Hand, says of this animal : ' It might be pitied for the slowness of its movements if these were not necessary to its very existence. It steals on its prey by night, and extends its arms towards the birds on the branch, or the great moth, with a motion so imperceptibly slow, as to make sure of its object.' He further adds: ' It may be well to notice some other characters that belong to animals, inhabitants of the tropical regions, which prowl by 42 The Vegetation and Animals night. The various creatures that enliven the woods in the daytime in these warm climates have fine skins and smooth hair, but those that seek their prey at night have a thick coat like animals of the Arctic regions. What is this but to be clothed as the sentinel whose watch is in the night ? They have eyes, too, which, from their peculiar structure, are called nocturnal, being formed to admit a large pencil of rays of light, and having the globe full and prominent, and the iris contractile, to open the pupil to the greatest extent.'* Wild boar seem obtainable everywhere, but not in large numbers. The natives shoot them for food, but the flesh is rather rank and very lean, and it is a little risky to eat it, as, unfortunately, it is often infested with Trichina, African hogs, as well as their European brethren, suffering from trichinosis. Rats swarm everywhere, and are a great nuisance. They and the white ants give a housekeeper an anxious time. One day I went into the store-room to get a pot of honey, and found that two rats had eaten through the cover, and then gone in after the honey. They had got so sticky that they could not jump out again, and there they had apparently * 'The Hand,' Sir Charles Bell, 9th edit., p. 22. London : George Bell and Son, York Street, Covent Garden, 1874. Rats 43 remained for some days. I should think they must have been very thirsty. We always had the greatest difficulty in keeping our meat from them, until at last we hit upon a plan which baffled them. If we suspended the meat from the roof by wire, they slid down the wire. If we hung it on wire stretched tightly across the room, they managed to swarm along the wire ; but we were successful when we hung the meat by a rope and made a knot in the rope half- way down, which just stopped a sheet of tin with a central hole in it. The rats came down the rope as far as the tin sheet, and there they stopped. If they endeavoured to get on to the tin, it tilted on one side with their weight, and being too slippery for them to cling to, they fell to the ground, just clear of the meat. Central Africa is very rich in different species of birds, especially along the great mountain chain. The two most noticeable families are perhaps the hawks and shrikes. Hawks and kites are frequently seen hovering overhead in search of the smaller birds and mammals which crowd the undergrowth. As a rule they soar out of reach of shot, and it is not easy to hit a Hying bird with a bullet. They will soar for hours at this provoking distance, and then suddenly swoop down upon your pets or your 44 The Vegetation and Animals poultry, and carry them off before you can get within range. Even when near, it is not always easy to bring them down with shot. I have before now fired straight up at a hawk overhead with a charge of pellets, and broken its legs ; but it still fiew on in circles as if nothing had happened, with legs hanging down limp and useless. The brilliant plumaged shrikes which meet the eye everywhere are in great number, and in great variety ; corresponding to the incredible profusion of insects which crowd hill, dale and moor of Central Africa, and upon which they live. But for the shrikes, no agriculturalist would save any of his crop, and even the woods would soon be laid bare. Brilliantly coloured though the shrikes are, the sun- birds and plantain-eaters quite outshine them. The sun-birds are the representatives in Africa of the humming-birds of America. They have the same gorgeous plumage, the same long curved bill for sucking the honey out of flowers, and the same elegant diminutive figure, though not quite so diminutive as their American sisters. The plantain- eaters on the contrary are rather larger in size than a pigeon. Their plumage is in varying shades of one colour, lavender, purple or olive green being the most common, with, in each case, a broad band of Gorgeous Birds 45 bright red across the wings. On the head is a large and elegant crest of feathers. The eyes and eyelids are a deep orange. They are birds of indifferent powers of flight, usually flying only from one tree to a neighbouring one, alighting on one of the lower branches, and hopping gradually up to the highest, from which they fly to the next tree, and so on. It is a little difficult to shoot them with anything except pellets, as they are screened very much by the boughs and foliage until they reach the summit of a tree, when they are usually out of reach of ordinary shot, which will not kill at such an eleva- tion. These birds are easily recognised at a distance l>v their peculiar cry, which exactly resembles the name given to them by the natives — the kulu-kulu. Some of the interior tribes use their wings as head ornaments; but it is said that no one is allowed to wear them unless he has distinguished himself by killing a man in battle. There are several varieties of king-fisher, even in the districts where there are no fish ; but even there they frequent the tiny streams and feed on the insects which specially abound amongst the copious vegetation on the banks. The immense swarms of bees which inhabit Africa naturally bring the bee-eaters in great numbers to 46 The Vegetation and Animals these regions. Starlings of brighter plumage than our European ones abound everywhere, and so do finches of different varieties. The Whydah finch is very conspicuous. A small bird with two feathers in its tail, about the size of those from the tail of a full-sized cock. This finch can easily be recognised at a distance by the two long feathers streaming out behind, which greatly impede its flight, giving it a very up and down movement. It always flies accompanied by half a dozen or more females, of duller plumage, and lacking the long tail feathers. It is a polygamous bird, I believe the only finch guilty of such a habit. The roller bird, which looks like a jay, and has much the same habits, is a very conspicuous object in the woods ; and so is the hoopoo with its elegant spreading crest. A group of these latter birds with their fluffy plumage and short flutter- ing flight looks not unlike a swarm of gigantic moths. Then there are two or three varieties of swallow, which build mud nests like our own variety ; but the European swallow, which arrives on the great plateau at the end of November, and leaves at the end of February, builds no nest, and consequently has always been a source of surprise to the natives, who w r ondered where it went to in the summer, and The Hornbill 47 why it built no nest ; the prevalent idea being that it hid in holes during that period. It is not so long since in England the popular idea was that the swallows hibernated in holes during the winter, and in many country places the belief still exists. HORNIill.I, The huge ungainly-looking greater hornbills, which are not infrequently seen in pairs, do not look so out of place amongst the baobob trees. Whatever the traveller may think of the ungainlincss of baobob 48 The Vegetation and Animals trees and hornbills, he must feel that the design of the one is in perfect harmony with that of the other. The smaller hornbills are of great frequency everywhere. The bird certainly does not live upon garbage or small animals as some books state, but chiefly upon fruits and nuts. It is stated that it can feed with impunity upon mix vomica, the nut from which strychnine is extracted ; but I was never able to ascertain if this statement was correct or not. The cuckoo appears to be common all over Africa, but the Central African variety is certainly indige- nous, the European variety not visiting these regions as the swallow does. In shape and plumage the African bird very closely resembles its English rela- tive ; but the cry is quite different. ' Tip-tip ' betrays its presence from quite a distance, and the natives name it after its cry, a very usual custom amongst the nature-observing Africans, some of whom call the jackal ' mbwehe,' and the cat ' miaou.' The natives assured me that the cuckoo builds nests like other birds, and though they could never show me a specimen, I expect they were correct, as they are very close observers of the habits of birds and animals. The Weaver bird is very plentiful, and its elegantly Owls 49 woven nest is the most conspicuous object in many of the trees. But though conspicuous and exposed, the nest is fairly safe from enemies. The bird in- variably builds upon a thorn-tree, and usually at the very end of one of its branches ; the nest, light though it is, dragging down the frail twig by its weight. No man or carnivor dare climb far up into this inhospitable tree ; and even the smaller monkeys, though they might reach within a couple of yards of the nest, dare not take the final spring into the fine network of terrible thorns that lie between them and their coveted booty. From hawks, most of the nests are protected by their tunnel-shaped entrance ; whilst the few that are constructed with- out this protecting tunnel, and so more exposed, I have noticed, are built side by side with a hornets' nest, which the natives told me was the usual arrangement. Any large bird disturbing the branches around the nest would at the same time disturb the hornets, who would make short work of the in- truder. Towards dusk the night-jars appear on the paths, and seem to fly up from under your very feet; whilst, when darkness has quite set in, the owls commence their melancholy hooting, which they keep up at intervals during the night. I never succeeded in 50 The Vegetation and Animals getting a specimen of an owl. It is very difficult to discover their exact whereabouts ; and the natives consider it unlucky to shoot them, so that they never would bring me one. In such a wooded country as Africa, of course wood-peckers abound, and the tap, tap of their beaks against the hollow trees can often be heard half a mile away. Guinea-fowl, quail, pigeons and doves are the chief edible birds. Guinea-fowl are very abundant, and very good eating. Doves, also, are common enough in the woods, and always obtainable ; but pigeons are not so plentiful, and I have only seen one variety wild — a bird with a large excrescence of purple skin at the base of its beak, and with slaty blue plumage. Tame pigeons, of several varieties, are common in the villages ; they have gradually extended by barter from Zanzibar, to which they were sent from Europe, I believe. The natives are very ingenious in the construction of complicated traps for the capture of birds ; I have often stopped to examine the system of levers and springs constructed with flexible twigs, and with strips of bark as ligatures. I unfortunately did not make a drawing of any, and they were too intricate to be recalled to mind without. The boys often Cobras 5 1 capture birds by smearing a kind of bird-lime on the leaves and twigs of the bushes they frequent. Reptiles naturally abound in such a tropical climate as that of Eastern Equatorial Africa. Snakes are everywhere seen, from the tiny grass snake, like a piece of narrow green ribbon, to the splendid python, thirty or more feet long. Yet snakes in Africa must be far more sluggish in their habits than those in India. At Mpwapwa, where I lived for a year in a village of perhaps two thousand people, there was only one case of snake bite, and that not a fatal one ; although we often came across snakes, the puff-adder in turning over stones, and cobras in the rooms or outhouses at night. The African cobra does not raise itself so high as the Indian one when about to strike ; rarely more than eight or nine inches ; neither does it inflate its hood so widely. I discovered a cobra once at night in a hut near our dwelling, and as I was not a very good shot, I went up close to it before firing ; but only succeeded in cutting its tail off. My friend, who was a very good shot, but unsteady from an attack of fever, was anxious that I should not shoot again, as he wanted the head uninjured. So he took the gun and aimed. 'I will spare the head,' he said; and fired. When the smoke cleared away, we found that 4—2 52 The Vegetation and Animals he had spared the head and apparently the body, too, as the creature was gone. Another time I was waked up at night by the noise of what I thought was a rat after some biscuits, which were on a table near ; and I tried to hit the creature, whatever it might be, with a slipper, when a horrid hissing noise warned me to desist ; so I struck a light and took my gun from its usual place at the bedside, whilst my wife went to fetch the boy. Presently he came, and then he pulled away a box behind which the creature was, whilst I fired at it, as its hiding-place was exposed. The cobras come into houses usually in search of rats. We had previously noticed that there had been a great scarcity of rats in the house for some weeks ; but we did not then know enough of the ways of cobras to guess the reason. On another occasion one of the boys discovered a cobra in an outhouse behind some boxes ; but he did not at the time know that it was a large snake. He fired at it, but only succeeded in wounding it. When I came, I managed to spear it about eighteen inches from the tail, and as I supposed, close to its head ; as we failed, however, to get it out, we thought we would tie a string to its tail, and then releasing the spear from the floor, to which it pinned the animal, pull it out, and despatch it. We tied the string on very Lizards Stalking their Prey 53 tightly, trusting to the animal being speared close to the head to prevent its turning upon us. But on loosening the spear, and pulling the animal out by the long string, we were surprised to find a six-foot cobra, which had been speared close to its tail, and which, consequently, might at any moment have turned upon us whilst we were tying it. It sounds rather like a story from the ' Lays of Ind,' to talk of tying strings on cobras' tails, and so pulling them out of their hiding-places. But snakes in Central Africa are far less savage than people at home suppose. I never saw a really large python. The largest I came across measured about fourteen feet. It was killed by a native near our house after it had made a meal off seven of his fowls. Lizards meet you at almost every turn in the path as you walk along; little creatures most of them, about the size of a newt or smaller. Some varieties live in the houses, running up the walls; and, what looks very curious, along the ceilings, too, after moths and other insects. They stalk their tiny prey very carefully and very patiently. A lightning dash forwards is followed by a few seconds of absolutely motionless repose ; then another dash, and yet another, until they are near enough to make their final rush, which is usually successful ; though 54 The Vegetation and Animals they frequently fail in getting their prey, as the insect generally makes off before they are near enough to make the final rush. There are large lizards, too ; but these are rarer, some being more than a foot long, adorned with the most brilliant scarlet colouring, and having stumpy tails that look just as if they had been bitten off short. Chameleons are far from uncommon ; but they stand so motionless on the twigs amongst the foliage, and adapt their colour so rapidly to their surroundings, that only an experienced eye discovers them. The rapidity with which they change colour is very surprising. I have seen one change in less than a minute from a yellow and brown to a most delicate transparent green, exactly like the young leaves of the banana-tree on which it stood. The natives told me that tobacco-juice would kill the chameleon almost instantly. I expressed incredulity; whereupon they gave one a little piece of tobacco which they had fixed on the end of a stick, and heated in the fire until it exuded its sticky juice. The chameleon snapped angrily at the tobacco, and then marched on slowly as if nothing had happened, a fact which I pointed out to the natives. ' Wait a little, master, wait and see,' they replied. The chameleon had hardly gone twenty steps when it Curious Insects 55 began to stagger, stopped short, and then gradually began to shake all over, as if it had a violent attack of St. Vitus' dance. Slowly its sides sank in, its 'III - ■■■ 1 It. THE MANTIS limbs were drawn towards its body, its tail curled up, and it fell over on its side dead. The curious insects which mimic in shape and colour sticks, leaves, and other inanimate objects, have been very accurately described by Professor 56 The Vegetation and Animals Drummond in his book on ' Tropical Africa,' as have also the white ants. I differ so widely from him in his accounts of the people and the climatic diseases that I am glad to be able to bear testimony to his de- scriptions of trees and animals, which are no less accurately than they are charmingly told. The butterflies are neither so varied nor so gorgeous as one would have expected ; but their comparative scarcity and sombreness are in keeping with the character of the vegetation. Beetles, on the other hand, are both beautiful and numerous. Central Africa is a paradise for the entomologist who devotes himself to beetles. Grasshoppers of every size swarm and make a continuous din all day long in the depths of the woods and everywhere at dusk, when the sound is sometimes quite deafen- ing. Ants of every variety swarm on the ground. One kind called ' siafu ' march in compact columns an inch or two wide, and many yards in length. Their bite is rather severe, so that it is no joke to step unconsciously on such a column. On a caravan journey the traveller will cross two or three of these columns every day. The leading man looks out for them, and, as he sees them, the word ' siafu ' passes rapidly from front to rear of the caravan, and every- one is on the look-out for them. They occasionally Siafu 57 enter the houses, and I have more than once been turned out of bed at midnight by them ; and they sometimes gave us trouble by getting into our fowl- yard or goat-pen. The poor animals' cries used to wake us up, and we had to go and hold torches to the front of the column of ants and burn them by thousands before we could persuade them to alter their course. Their invasion of a house is not by any means an unmitigated evil. Through it they make their irresistible march, and clean the place for you as no effort of your own could clean it. Every insect, be it moth or mosquito, beetle or cock- roach, is quickly covered, and as quickly eaten, not a white ant remains to tell the tale of the invasion ; even the lizards are picked clean to the bones, and the very scorpions in their apparently impregnable armour have to succumb to the onslaughts of such unnumbered foes. A very few hours usually suf- fices to take the column through, and leave you with a clean house, though perhaps an empty larder. Scorpions arc very numerous, especially in sandy rocky districts, as Ugogo, where the vast plains covered with loose stones give unlimited cover to both scorpions and puff-adders. The scorpions vary from one to eight or more inches in length. I 58 The Vegetation and Animals believe their sting is occasionally dangerous ; but I have never known it cause more than transient pain and swelling. Bees do far more damage than scorpions ; but then they are, of course, more useful. The natives hollow out logs for them or utilize the empty packing-cases left by passing caravans,* which they place amongst the branches of the trees. These you see perched up in the trees all about, each with its swarm of bees. When the hone}' season comes, the boxes are lowered at night into a fire of dry grass, the bees destroyed, and the honey taken. Occasionally the bees seem to get fits of anger, and buzz furiously around their hives, de- scending on any bird, animal, or man who happens to pass beneath at the time. Some were kept in the loft of a house of a friend with whom I was staying ; and once, when they were angry, they came down and killed a tame eagle belonging to my friend, whilst on another occasion they killed a small monkey which I had bought as entomological attendant for my dogs. Amidst all this teeming animal life, and the * Tate's cube-sugar boxes are such a very convenient size for loads, that they are largely used as packing-cases for goods sent by caravan, and find their last resting-places in the trees of Central Africa. Mr. Tate is more widely advertised than he imagines. Disposal of Refuse 59 luxuriant undergrowth in the rainy season, what becomes of the refuse is a question that naturally occurs to the traveller who sees the ground so bare and with such scanty remains of death or decay. A large animal, say an antelope, dies in the morning ; what becomes of the body ? Before an hour has passed, flies in large numbers will have settled upon it, and laid, not eggs, but living maggots, which will be seen revelling in the juices of the eye, and along the free borders of the lips.* Later in the day the body will have been seen by crows and hawks, who will swoop down and help themselves to the eyes, and occasionally to some of the viscera. As night draws on, the body, if near a regular hyenas' beat, will be scented by these animals ; if off their beat, it will remain untouched until sufficiently decom- posed to attract their attention from a distance. I have seen a man's body lie three days in an un- frequented ravine before being scented by the * These flies are the bane of dwellers in the tropics, and are the cause of meat turning so quickly. But we found that in the hottest season we could keep meat for forty-eight hours, if directly the animal was killed it was cut up neatly into joints, and these dried on the surface by dusting a little flour over and hung up in a shady airy place, enclosed in large loose bags of fine muslin, which effectually prevented the entrance of these flies, as well as of the minuter kinds which were able to pass through mosquito-netting. 60 The Vegetation and Animals hyenas. But this state of things is unusual ; and the first night the hyenas and jackals usually satisfy themselves with the viscera and some of the soft parts, returning on the second night to dispose of the rest, bones and all, leaving only seme of the skull, which even their jaws are unable to crack. Meanwhile, the maggots which commenced opera- tions the first hour continue their work upon the brain, and in other secluded spots, until the sun so dries up their food that they are no longer able to make any impression upon it. The siafu now come upon the scene, and gnaw away every dry fragment of flesh which has resisted the efforts of the softer- feeding maggots, who themselves go to form a relish to the harder food if they have been imprudent enough to linger behind after the advent of the siafu. The contents of the alimentary canal which have escaped being swallowed with the viscera are now carefully collected by the scavenger beetles, rolled into little balls, and carried off to their homes. The larger pieces of dry skin, too extensive or too sun-dried for the siafu, are left for the wire-worms, which soon demolish every fragment. It is these little creatures which are the dread of taxidermists, and by their proclivities make such havoc amongst his treasures. White Ants 61 In like manner the immense profusion of dead vegetable matter, the millions of decayed trees and fallen boughs, directly they are thoroughly dry are attacked by a small grub — the so-called ' white ant,' the larva of an insect allied to the dragon-fly. The white ants inhabit every acre of tropical Africa in countless billions, and never leave over from one year to the other any fragment of dead dry wood ; all is consumed, and so turned into soil. Professor Drummond observes truly that they do the work of the worms of more temperate regions. But worms are plentiful, none the less, even in tropical Africa, though their work is confined to the few weeks when the ground is sufficiently soft for them to perform their functions. Thus every remnant of refuse is removed from the soil ; and notwithstanding the profusion of vegetation in the rainy season, and the abundance of animal life, no refuse long remains to taint the air, or encumber the ground of the unfrequented, uncultivated, and uninhabited jungles of Central Africa. CHAPTER III THE PEOPLE For many years past, the peoples whose habitat is, roughly speaking, Africa south of the equator — a district of some four and a half million square miles, with a population of over forty million — have been known to anthropologists and linguists by the name of l Bantu,' a word meaning ' persons ' in the dialect of one of the southern tribes of these peoples — the Kaffirs. The branches of this great Bantu family speak dialects of one great language, entirely differing from any other language known to us, with the exception of those of Polynesia. The two chief peculiarities of this language are that all the gram- matical changes, with hardly an exception, are pro- duced by prefixes ; and that the different parts of speech in a sentence are all made to agree with the principal noun by an alliterative change of prefix. The nouns are divided into classes, of which about An Alliterative Language 63 half a dozen are in common use ; and nearly every word in a sentence will require its prefix to be altered should the noun be changed or even altered from the singular to the plural. An example taken from the Swahili dialect will best make the matter clear : Mtu mwema mmoja wa Sultani aliangitka : One good man of (the) Sultan fell.* Watu wema ivengi wa Sultani walianguka : Many good men of (the) Sultan fell. Vitu vyema vingi vya Sultani vilianguka : Many good things of (the) Sultan fell. In these three sentences nearly every word changes its prefix according to its agreement with mtu, man; watu, men ; or vitu, things. It was these alliterative changes which made it so difficult for the first missionaries and explorers to get a grasp of the grammar of the language, and which led some of the earlier Jesuit missionaries to the Congo to describe it as an unintelligible language without a grammar. Although the tribes south of 5° N. Lat. are almost entirely Bantu, there is a group of families which has intruded from the north-east, and which, limited on the west by the Victoria Nyanza, has spread southwards as far as 6° S. Lat. Of this group the * Literally : Man good one of Sultan he did-fall. 64 The People Masai are the chief. Again, in the extreme south there is a tribe believed to be quite distinct from the Bantu, although living amongst them — viz., the Hottentots, or bushmen. These bushmen, who until lately were considered the most diminutive people in the world, are, I have little doubt, of the same race as the pigmies of Schweinfurth and Stanley. They are, it is true, rather taller than the pigmies ; but this is easily explained by the more temperate climate in which they live — just as the Zulus, who live in the same latitude, are so much taller than their tropical Bantu brethren. A Zulu bears about the same proportion to an Mgogo that a bushman does to a pigmy. There is no reason why the bushmen or pigmies should not be found at intervals over the forest lands from the Cape to the equator ; for even now the Zulus, in scattered bands, reach right to the equator — parties of warriors who fled from Zululand years ago from fear of Ketchwayo or his father. They are called Maviti in the equatorial district. They retain the Zulu language, but rather altered from that which is spoken in the south. With the exceptions mentioned above, all tribes within the limits named belong to one great family, and speak languages agreeing in grammar, and differing only in dialect in the different localities. The Congo The Bantu 65 people on the west coast, the Zulus and so-called Kaffirs in the south, the Swahili on the east coast, and the Waganda, or Buganda as they call them- selves, all, therefore, belong to one family ; and anyone who knows one of these languages will at once be able to pick up words here and there in a book written in any of the others, and will be familiar, of course, with the grammar of all. It is the great similarity of language which renders it possible for a traveller knowing only one language to pass from one side of Africa to the other, and which thus enabled Stanley and Cameron, knowing only Swahili, or Livingstone, knowing only Sechuana, to cross the Continent south of the equator. The Bantu differs much from the typical negro. His hair is not so much like wool ; occasionally it is even nearly straight. The colour of his skin is never so dark, but varies from a very dark brown to a shade scarcely darker than that of an Italian ; and his features as a rule are much more chiselled and refined. It is impossible to say which tribe are to be con- sidered the purest Bantu, or what perhaps is the same thing, which speaks the dialect least altered from the original mother tongue. Yet it is generally admitted that it must be sought amongst the tribes 5 *&* 65 The People south of the Orange River, possibly the so-called Kaffirs. In the north, undoubtedly the people and languages have both been altered by admixture with the races bordering upon them ; the Swahili, in addition to these alterations, show traces of much admixture with the Arab and Hindu. Indeed the Swahili language has completely lost two of its numerals — ' six ' and ' seven ': mtandatu and mf ungate — their places being supplied by the Arabic sita and saba. The ethnological feature most noticeable to the traveller, as he goes inland from the Swahili coast, is the small size of the tribes which he comes across, and the want of unity amongst the villages of each tribe. A chief near the coast seems rarely to rule over more than a thousand subjects, and one in the interior rarely over more than three thousand, usually very much fewer ; whilst it is only here and there that chiefs are found owning any allegiance to a greater chief or overlord. This want of unity, and the evil that results from it, will be considered in the chapter on the slave-trade. In beliefs and customs the various tribes have much in common. I always made a practice of inquiring from natives what they believed before I spoke to them about our own beliefs ; but I never Religions Beliefs 67 came across one who did not know that there was a God who created the world, and Who still exercised some kind of influence, more or less indefinite, over its welfare. Nor yet, strangely enough, did I ever come across one who believed in a future life, or to whom it had ever occurred that the grave or the hyenas were not his final destiny. Though with this belief there was a strangely inconsistent custom of propitiating the spirits of the deceased ; building little huts for them, and placing within for their use a little food and a cooking utensil — food which the spirits of their relations, or the wild animals, did certainly carry away. I was unable to discover much about any religious practice or ceremony amongst the East Africans in the interior. This was due partly to their shyness in speaking to a white man about their beliefs, partly to my inability to converse confidentially with them on account of my ignorance of any dialect beyond that used at the coast, and partly, no doubt, to the very hazy and indefinite nature of the ideas which they have on the subject. They seem to have some notion of ancestral worship, or rather worship of their progenitors whom they had known before death — a worship which I was unable to reconcile with their expressed disbelief in any future state. 5—2 68 The People One instance of sacrifice I did come across, when, towards the end of a long drought, a few natives went to a retired spot to pray for rain, and, as part of the ceremony, killed and cooked a goat ' for God,' they said, but the)* eat it themselves, notwith- standing. Of abstract right and wrong they have some very distinct ideas, though these are very limited in number. For instance, they show their apprecia- tion of the excellence of truthfulness by being very indignant if they are accused of lying, and to be called a thief is a mark of great reproach. The only idea of defilement that I could ascertain they possessed was amongst those tribes which drew strict lines of demarcation between women who were nearly related or allied to men, and those who were not, the former never being allowed to approach within a certain distance of their male relatives or clansmen, and the infraction of this rule causing defilement to the man. I never heard, however, of any ceremonial cleansing being rendered necessary by such defilement, and I think that the only cere- mony resulting was a good beating administered to the unfortunate or incautious woman. I never heard of an instance of idols being worshipped in East Africa, though charms or Witchcraft 69 fetishes, as they are variously called, abound all across the Continent. The natives wear charms, suspend them over their doorways, place them in front of their thresholds, on their farms — in fact everywhere. They look upon these charms, or medicines as they call them, as good devices which will counteract the evil devices of men or super- natural beings. Charms, then, are the antidotes to witchcraft. The leading idea of witchcraft is that one indi- vidual can, by incantations, or by compounding a mixture, cause his neighbour to fall ill or even to die, or he can afflict his live stock in a similar way. The individual so affected can, if he is aware of what has taken place, counteract these incantations or mixtures, either by more potent ones of his own, or by compassing the death of the author of them, as the death of a wizard is supposed to result in the neutralization of his charms. Now, sometimes these mixtures are actual poisons, and not only is this the case, but they are administered surreptitiously to the individual whom it is desired to bewitch ; and in these cases of course the illness or death of the bewitched individual is the direct result of the wizard's mixtures. I was never able to ascertain what poisons were used, but was told that they were ;o The People vegetable products. Possibly belladonna or nux vomica, as these plants are found in the interior. It is strange that though vegetable drugs are used for this purpose, and also for tipping arrows, yet they rarely, if ever, seem applied to the healing of disease. The only product that I could ascertain was made use of, was that from the castor oil tree ; the fresh oil obtained from the nuts, or the juice expressed from the leaves, being used for external application, as a stimulant to breasts which refused to yield their proper supply of milk. A native seeing an instance of people actually dying shortly after being bewitched, and being unaware of the part which poison had played in the matter, would not unnaturally conclude, by a hasty generalization, that all witchcraft had an equally sure result. His belief in witchcraft is a logical not a moral, a mental not a spiritual defect. In some such way as this, by hasty generalization, he comes to believe in unlucky days and unlucky places. I do not think that there are any priests to teach him these beliefs, but, rather, that they are the result of careless observation, or faulty deduction from undoubted facts. Yet in attributing the belief in witchcraft chiefly to faulty observation and deduc- tion, we must not overlook one element of truth in Effects of Witchcraft yi the asserted power of witchcraft, namely, the effect which mental states do, undoubtedly, exercise on the body. Emotion can increase or diminish nutri- tion, and profoundly alter secretions. A sudden shock may cause paralysis, insanity, or even death ; and on the other hand, there seems little doubt, as Professor Maudsley argues, ' that the strong belief that a bodily disorder will be cured by some appli- ance, itself innocent of good or harm, may so affect, beneficially, the nutrition of the part as actually to effect a cure. . . . Ceremonies, charms, gestures, amulets, and the like, have in all ages, and among all nations been greatly esteemed and largely used in the treatment of disease ; and it may be speci- ously presumed that they have derived their power, not from any contact with the supernatural, but, as Bacon observes, by strengthening and exalting the imagination of him who used them.' It is this admixture of a little truth with much error, of a few facts with many fancies, which, no doubt, has gained for witchcraft so many adherents. Belief is infectious, at any rate the belief which is held by the large majority ; and though it is difficult for any man to help yielding, for a time at least, to the current infatuations of his sect or party, he would probably soon cut himself adrift from any j 2 The People belief which had not some, indeed many, facts to support it. ' As to the imitative nature of credulity/ says Bagehot, ' there can be no doubt. In " Eothen " there is a capital description of how every sort of European resident in the East, even the shrewd merchant and the post-captain, with his bright, wakeful eyes, comes soon to believe in witchcraft, and to assure you, in confidence, that there " really is something in it." He has never seen anything convincing himself, but he has seen those who have seen those who have seen those who have seen. In fact, he has lived in an atmosphere of infectious belief, and he has inhaled it.' The native feeling regarding a bewitched or un- lucky place, is something like that of some Agnostic who replies when asked to live in a haunted house : 1 No, I thank you ; I believe not in a spiritual world, but there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in our philosophy, and I do not care to bring myself into unnecessary contact with an apparently injurious and unknown force, whether psychological or otherwise.' 1 No place is unlucky,' I said one day to a chief who objected to go to a certain village on account of it? being unlucky, or fetish, or ' mwiko,' as he called it in the native language. ' Indeed,' he replied, Unlucky Days 73 ' then why did you leave the place you had been camping in and choose another ?' ' Because it was unhealthy, and I should have fallen ill, and perhaps died, had I stayed there.' ' Yes,' he said, ' that is just what I mean; I shall get ill, and perhaps die if I go to that village. You call it unhealthy, I call it " mwiko," it is bewitched.' I was silenced. There is nothing more in the belief in witchcraft than in the belief which many English people have in the unluckiness of spilling salt, of commencing any work on a Friday, of sitting down thirteen to dinner, or of walking under a ladder ; nothing more in the practice of it than envy, spite and hatred, making use of the means which lie close to their hands. I little thought beforehand what one effect of our strict observance of Sundays on the march would have on the observant natives. ' Do you know why \vc work as little as possible on Sunday ?' I said to a small villager who was asking me many questions. ' Oh yes,' he promptly replied, ' it is your unlucky day.' What is the case in West Africa, I am not com- petent to say ; but in East and Central Africa I do not think the natives can, in any sense, be fairly accused of worshipping fetishes or charms, or the unlucky days, or other things which these charms are supposed to neutralize, any more than a somewhat 74 The People superstitious Englishman could be fairly accused of being a worshipper of Fridays, or ladders, or patent medicines. All believe in witchcraft ; indeed, this seems the universal belief from north to south, and from sea to sea. No native in Africa ever dies a natural death according to the popular idea. If he is a man of any importance, an inquest is always held ; a medicine-man casts lots, to see in whose hut lies the witch or wizard who has caused his death, and when the hut is discovered, the same unerring lot singles out the victim, who is thereupon tried and executed, the usual mode of executing being either to hack the victim to death with axes, or else to burn him alive. On one occasion a sub- chief at Mpwapwa went out hunting with a friend. Being, as most natives are, very careless with his gun, instead of shooting the game he expected to, he shot himself through his knee-joint, causing a bad compound fracture of the thigh. He died not many days after- wards, and an inquest was at once held to ascertain the cause of his death. The medicine-man called in discovered that he had been bewitched, and some poor innocent unfortunate was accordingly put to death. This casting of lots is not all fair and above-board by any means. The medicine-man takes care that The Medicine- Man 75 the lot does not fall at the door of a powerful man, or the probability is that the intended victim will make short work of him and his lots. Usually a friendless old man or woman is the unhappy victim ; this being the safest course, the medicine-man get- ting his fee, and the dead man leaving no one behind who will trouble to avenge him. But the medicine- man's lot is not all fees and feasting. He is credited with the power of bewitching people himself, and professional jealousy often incites a brother medico to rid himself of one who, as he considers, absorbs too large a share of his practice, the result being that the medicine-man makes his bed at last on the burning place to which he has consigned so many victims. Still the profession is always filled, though one would have thought that the pleasure of roasting even many other people would hardly compensate any man for having to undergo this agony himself. Another function of the medicine-man is to provide rain ; and great meetings are held at which mono- tonous musical incantations go on all day long, in the hope that rain may come. If it comes, he gets the credit of it, and if it does not come, he demands more presents, which he will hand over (when he asks him to do so) to the yet unpropitiated god. Sometimes, however, the disappointed people come j 6 The People to the conclusion that the medicine-man would make the most acceptable present, and he is accordingly offered up. Occasionally a person punished for witchcraft only meets the fate he richly deserves, as when a man who covets his neighbour's goods, threatens to bewitch him if he proves obstinate. I remember the case of an Arab, who, passing through a village up country, and being unable to obtain what he wanted from the people there, told them that he was going to bewitch them. They naturally came to the conclusion that it would be a very desirable thing if he died before his spells were completed, and accordingly they speared him. The custom peculiar, in the civilized world, to the Jews prevails amongst certain tribes in the interior, whilst others never practise it. This rite is per- formed at about the fourteenth year upon boys, and in a modified form upon girls. The rite has ap- parently not been introduced by the Arabs, as many of the tribes who practise it hold little or no inter- course with them, and are far too conservative in their customs to follow the Arabs or anyone else. It appears to have no relation to any religious belief; indeed, there is practically no Mohammedanism in East Equatorial Africa, except on the coast and in the Arab settlements of the interior, which are few A Jewish Rite yj and far between. No one can say whence the rite arose, and why some tribes should practise it so carefully and some not at all. I have never even heard a theory suggested. Most of the tribes seem devoid of much hair on the face, but not all, and those tribes which appar- ently have none at all have usually had some, which they have got rid of by artificial means ; a hair is considered a blemish, and so the 'better dressed' men, if one may so term them, carry a pair of rough iron tweezers with them, with which they extract the offending growths. Salutations differ amongst the different tribes. Most simply salute at a distance ; but some shake hands, and this occurs amongst tribes who have never seen a white man, and who have little inter- course with the Arabs. I have seen a native who had just returned home from a distance meeting his friends, going up to them, placing his left hand on their shoulder and shaking the right hand with them, smiling away all the time, just as any warm- hearted Englishman might do on meeting a very intimate friend after a long absence. The style of huts built by the inland tribes has been described in a previous chapter ; and from that it will be seen how isolated each hut is from its 7 8 The People neighbour, an isolation which is increased by the self-supporting and self-contained character of each little community. Each tembe, containing four or five families, has its own farm or ' shamba,' upon which it raises millet seed, Indian corn, sweet potatoes, pumpkins, ground nuts, and usually some variety of bean, and a green vegetable. Both men and women work in the shamba, hoeing up the soil into high ridges, and planting the seeds on the top of the ridges just before the commencement of the heavy rains, and after the light rains have made the previously-baked ground soft enough to work. The ground is hoed up by means of a jembe, an implement like a large English hoe, with a spike behind, the spike being passed through a hole burnt in a long smoothed piece of wood, which serves as a handle. These hoes are made chiefly in Unyamwezi, where the natives have small charcoal furnaces and smelt the iron which is there found on the surface. They then become the chief article of barter, and are either used as hoes by the tribes who purchase them, or else forged into spearheads, arrowheads, billhooks, or axes. Each village usually has its forge for this purpose, the bellows being made of two cylinders cut from the trunk of a tree, the bottom of each cylinder is solid, and the top < 5 < Workers in Metal 79 covered with a piece of goatskin firmly fastened round the edge, and with a rod fixed to the centre. The smith squats down between these cylinders and raises and depresses the rods alternately, current of air escaping by a Jiot- heax) HOE AND OTHER IMPLEMENTS. tube fitted into the lower part of each cylinder, the two tubes uniting together just in front of a small charcoal fire. 80 The People The grain raised on the shamba is gathered by women in harvest time, and brought home in baskets woven by women from the numberless kinds of long, strong grass and reed growing everywhere. The basket work is very thoroughly and neatly done ; many of the baskets will hold water, and are by some tribes used instead of gourds for that purpose. When brought home the seed is stored in large tubs made of wickerwork and clay, which being larger than the doorways have to be built inside the house. The next step is to pound the grain in a large wooden mortar. Two women do this work together, the two large heavy pestles, five feet long, working alternately in one mortar in perfect time. The workers frequently perform this very heavy labour, each having a child fastened on to her back. They are careful not to waste any grain during this process ; and to this end the mortar is frequently placed in a large, flat, shallow basket. This pounding takes off the outer husk, and the mixture is then winnowed very skilfully in shallow baskets, and the separated grain is finally ground to fine flour. This is effected by placing it upon a flat stone, and passing over this backwards and forwards a rounded stone with one flat surface. An incline to the large under stone gives the necessary inducement to the flour to collect Fallow Ground 81 in one direction. This grinding entails very hard work, much harder than that entailed by the two round horizontally -placed mill-stones which are used by the coast tribes, and which are so familiar to us in pictures of Eastern life. The flour so pre- pared is mixed with water and cooked into a thick porridge in an earthenware pot made out of a kind of iron claystone. This pot is supported on three stones for cooking purposes, and a wood fire lighted between them. The porridge or 'ugali,' as it is called by the natives, is the staple food of the interior. Millet seed ugali is much more sustaining than Indian corn, and the latter than rice. With their ugali the natives eat as a relish either dried half-cooked fowl, or beef or mutton treated in a similar way. When these delicacies are not to be obtained, ground nuts, pumpkins, or some other vegetables take their place. On the coast cocoa-nut is largely used as a relish with more satisfying food ; but the cocoa-nut palm does not grow much, if at all, in the interior. The soil is prepared for cultivation by burning down the trees, undergrowth and grass, and digging all the remains in. A farm is generally cultivated for two years, and then allowed to lie fallow for a year. The natives have no idea of alternation of crops upon the same soil, nor do they ever attempt to 6 82 The People enrich it by using any of the manures obtainable ; although land near a village is really valuable, as, so much being cultivated, if much lies fallow near the village it necessitates some of the residents having their farms perhaps two miles from home. Each tembe keeps its own herd of cattle, sheep and goats, and its own fowls and occasionally pigeons. But the people pay little attention to the improve- ment of their cattle, making no attempt either to fatten them up, or to improve the breeds or keep them select. The only unusual product which I saw was a cow which was a cross between a buffalo and a domestic cow, but how it had been obtained I never ascertained. There are herds of donkeys far up in the interior, but again little attention seems to be paid to their breeding ; they are very sluggish creatures. As zebras are so plentiful, I should think it would pay to cross the donkeys with them ; such an experiment has been successfully tried in the Zoological Gardens, and the animals stuffed are now in the Natural History Museum at South Kensington. The animals are herded by the younger members of each family, who take them daily to the country round to find pasturage, and to the wells or streams for water. The cows supply the milk, which is usually drunk sour, or else kept for the purpose of making Protection from Cold 83 butter, which when rancid is used for anointing the body with, a more necessary custom than dwellers in temperate zones are apt to imagine. The naked skin needs protecting against the cool winds and night air of even a tropical climate, especially in the hills ; and oil well rubbed in is as great a retainer of warmth as even a woollen vest. Natives, though not averse to washing, will never do so in any region where there are cold winds, unless they have a supply of oil at hand with which to anoint them- selves afterwards. Many tribes rub on their skin a mixture of oil and clay to protect themselves not only against the cold, but also against the rays of the sun. For the same reason they also rub clay and oil on their calico when used as clothing, as it is not of sufficient substance without such treatment to protect them from either sun or wind. The chief at Mpwapwa one day received a present from a German settler of a handsome black Arab cloth gown, ornamented with silver braid. Next day he appeared in his new garment. It was almost un- recognisable ; he had carefully rubbed in clay and oil over its entire surface. When cattle are killed for food, the skins are scraped clean, pegged out on the ground hair down- wards, and dried in the sun. The Waganda and some C— 2 84 The People tribes in the south, amongst whom are the Bechuana, prepare their skins with great care, rubbing ingre- dients in to make them supple ; but the less cultured peoples with whom we are concerned are content to simply clean and dry their skins. The skin so prepared is cut to shape with a knife, holes bored in it with an arrowhead, and thin thongs cut from it passed through these holes, and used to sew it into the required shape for use as clothing. On the caravan routes, fowls, eggs, and grain are bartered by the people for cloth, which, along these routes, is largely used for clothing instead of skins. By the same method of barter, old flint locks, and some- times old muskets and ammunition, are obtained from passing caravans; but the spears, javelins, bows, and arrows are made by the natives them- selves. Thus, with the exception of the iron hoe-heads, which are made by the Wanyamwezi, each tembe is quite independent, and able to provide itself with all the necessaries and, to an African's idea, all the comforts of life. Yet the African has little foresight, and will not store up to provide against failure in his crop ; hence, even one scanty rainy season will cause a famine that will result in the death of large numbers of people, especially the very young and very old. Tobacco «5 The African spends much of his time smoking under the shade of a clay and wickerwork awning. The pipe he uses is made from a gourd, and the smoke is inhaled through water contained in it, the water being changed as often as it becomes foul — foul, that is, to an African's taste. The tobacco grows in a little protected enclosure near his tembe, HOOKAH and he dries it himself. We planted lettuces in our garden, and the natives mistook them when young for the tobacco-plant. I remember one year, when the tobacco crop was rather poor and behind- hand, that the natives came up to gaze in envy at the lettuces of a friend of mine, remarking : ' You have managed to get your tobacco well forward this year.' Indian hemp, or hasheesh, which I have 86 The People nowhere seen growing, is also used by the natives in some districts. It produces a kind of intoxication, and the devotee to the hasheesh-pipe soon becomes a slave to the habit. Not only smoking, but snuff- taking is universally practised by the natives of both sexes. I remember a native who, seeing a European in bad health using some strong smelling-salts, went up to him, and asked to be allowed to try the white man's snuff, a request which was at once granted ; and the native vigorously tried the white man's snuff, and then sat down on the ground in breathless amazement. The boys and girls spend their time between herd- ing the cattle or playing games, or idling, chiefly the latter. The younger ones amuse themselves with mimic spears, bows, and arrows, the elder ones play a kind of hockey, and the adults a game of marbles on a large board, the rules of which I did not succeed in ascertaining. In many places the ' ngoma ' is a favourite occupation. Men and women stand round in a large circle, and one man and one woman from opposite sides advance towards the centre, dance a few steps round each other, sometimes holding hands, and then retire, to be followed by the next couple, and so on in endless succession, whilst a native drum keeps up a monotonous but not un- The Ngoma 87 pleasing succession of sounds, three or four in number, and varying in intensity, without intermis- sion for many hours, sometimes even for a day and night. Lying about in the sun, or in the shade when that is too hot, seems to an African boy the summum bonum of existence. He does not naturally care for games, except such as require little exertion, and that little in extreme moderation. Probably it would not take many generations of continuous living in a tropical climate to reduce us to an approximately similar condition of chronic lethargy. The East Equatorial African is not a warlike individual ; he is timid and suspicious, and these characteristics often urge him on to acts of violence which he would not naturally commit. Of all the Bantu races in the district we are considering, the Mhehe, living in Uhehe, south of Ugogo, is the most warlike, and equalling him is the Masai, who, however, does not belong to the Bantu family. Yet the courage and ferocity of the Masai have been, I have no hesitation in saying, very much overrated by travellers, and I believe his reputation for bravery arises solely from the fact that he is less peaceable, and perhaps somewhat less timid, than the tribes by which he is surrounded. He has a wholesome dread of the white man, and is not likely to cause much 88 The People trouble to the Imperial British East Africa Company, in whose sphere he chiefly lives. Indeed, he will probably be glad to come to terms with the company at the earliest opportunity, and may prove a very useful ally. I have seen some battles between different Bantu tribes, and the combatants frequently stand well out of range, and fire at each other with flint-lock muskets or other fossil weapons. Just before I went up into the interior, there had been a battle between two villages near the place to which I was going. The)' had fought for forty- eight hours, I was told, without a single casualty on either side. The different tribes are very particular about the shape and ornamentation of their weapons, the spears especially ; and the tribe to which men on the warpath belong can easily be recognised by the shape of the weapons they use. The small spear of the Mhehe, for instance, is very different from the small spear of the neighbouring tribes, but remark- ably like the assegai of the Zulu, so much so, that when I showed some natives in the interior the coloured picture in the Graphic of the death of two officers in the Zulu War, they at once exclaimed, on seeing the weapons the Zulus carried : ' Why, those are Wahehe.' The accompanying illus- trations of Kihehe, Ki Masai, and Kinyamwezi spears Ornamentation of Weapons will show the points of difference. A peculiar weapon, used appar- ently all over Africa, is one closely resembling the Irishman's knob- kerry, used for settling disputes in a friendly way. The knob-kerry, or ' rungu,' used by the Wa-Chagga at the base of Kilimanjaro is con- trasted with that used by the Matabele, ac- cording to Mackenzie in his book, ' Ten Years North of the Orange River,' from which I have copied the engrav- ing. It is used upon both men and animals, and when wielded by a skilful hand it is cap- able of inflicting an ugly wound upon a man. I have occasionally seen •JVc u on O Assaoai Sfigar 89 o Mate Be le Kunqu Kt Masat AY/, t man I a ro SPE VRS AND KN0I5-KERRIES 90 The People it used by the natives, but without any result, as it never hit the object at which it was aimed. In many districts, the natives are obliged to wear anklets of roughly- made iron bells when they go out after dusk, in order to warn others of their approach, as a man approaching noiselessly at night is supposed to be bent upon mischief, and there is no penalty if he is killed. Under ordinary circumstances, if a man is killed by accident, the person who kills must pay his value to his relatives. Man being such a regular article of barter, there is never any difficulty in arriving at the damages to be paid. The chiefs are chosen by the leading men. I rather think that in this selection the wealthiest men, as is natural, have most to say in the matter. Yet there is occasionally a man who is known as the chiefs heir during the latter's lifetime ; but I do not know how he is selected. The chief always seems to have more slaves and wealth of all kinds than any other man ; this is natural, because each chief inherits the wealth of his predecessor, and adds his own riches to it. I have never seen a chief do manual labour, his principal functions being apparently to decide disputes between leading men, to pay visits to neighbouring chiefs, and receive visits from them. There are always sub-chiefs, but Warriors 9 1 I do not know how they are chosen. The chiefs can call upon their men to fight, but rarely seem to organize them for war. The warriors do not appear to be ever drilled ; but occasionally put on their war- paint and dress when going to visit neighbouring villages in a friendly way. Once I saw half a dozen in war-paint, shields and spears, indulging in a mock attack upon an imaginary enemy ; when the enemy appeared somewhat unexpectedly in the shape of my mastiff and his puppy, who rushed up towards them, their curiosity excited at the sight of such strange creatures. But the warriors mistook the animals' innocent intentions, and made for the nearest hut, throwing away such impedimenta as shields and spears, in their headlong flight. We came up shortly afterwards, and explained matters to them, when the}' all came out again to obtain their dis- carded weapons, laughing heartily at their mistake, and evidently not in the least considering their con- duct unwarlike. When a chief dies, the fact is kept quiet until his successor is elected. If you happen to ask where he is, you will be told that he has gone to an ad- jacent district for his health. His successor, who is frequently his brother, is often not elected for some weeks ; but when elected, he acquires at once 92 The People all the property of his predecessor, including his wives ; but his predecessor's favourite wife will not necessarily, indeed, not probably, be his ; and if not, her bracelets and necklaces and other ornaments will all be taken off to grace the neck and limbs of his own favourite. I remember well two sable ladies, heavy with ornaments of brass and copper, who used to visit my wife, and sit upon the veranda whilst she talked or read to them, coming back after the death of the chief, their husband, dressed in dirty cloth, without a single ornament. When girls become of a marriageable age, their parents have a grand feast, at which the fact is made public, and they can then be sought in marriage by any eligible young man. An eligible suitor is one who can give the parents the required number of cows. But a likely young man is allowed to pay a proportion of the cows at the marriage, and the rest afterwards. If the girl does not like her husband, she is by some tribes allowed to leave him, but her parents have to return the cows. Girls, however, are usually allowed some say in the marriage arrangements. I recollect being rather amused, one day, at hearing the reply of a pleasant-faced young woman, who was asked why she had refused the hand of the chief of the village ; Eligible Sailors 93 (part of his hand, correctly speaking, as he already had two or three wives). She said he was too old, and too ugly. It was most true. A young man is not considered grown up until he marries ; so a bachelor is not looked upon with very great rever- ence. I recollect when going, one day, to a strange village, a little chit of a boy marched up to me, stuck his arms out, put his hands into what would have been his pockets, had he worn clothes, and putting his head on one side, looked up at me, and said, in an impudent voice : ' Are you married ?' On another occasion my wife and I had been visiting a chief of a small village, and as we were going away, we heard the steps of people running to catch us up ; so we waited a moment, and up came two young men quite out of breath. As soon as he could get his breath, one of them said, pointing to my wife : ' How many cows could I get one like that for?' I tried to explain to him that in England people did not get their wives in that way. ' For nothing!' he exclaimed, delighted — 'could I get one like that for nothing ?' I told him in answer to one of his questions that, if he came to England, he would be allowed to ask a woman to be his wife, but that I thought if he did so, she would probably say: 'No.' His friend, upon this, looked at him, 94 The People and, bursting into a hearty fit of laughter said, with emphasis : ' Yes, I expect she would say, No.' Both men and women, the latter especially, are very polite to white people, and they stand at the door when calling, and wait for an invitation before coming in. When on a journey down country on one occasion with my wife and child, the natives at most villages used to send a spokesman to ask us at what time it would be most convenient to us for them to come and see the baby, if we would allow them to do so. I have spoken of the natural cowardice of many of the tribes, yet they are brave enough when with white men. When they know you, they trust you not to desert them, and so they will not desert you. Their cowardice is apparent more than real — as much caution as cowardice ; a caution, too, the natural outcome of distrust, for untruthfulness is the curse of Africa, as it is of Eastern nations, and a native feels when fighting that he cannot place much confidence in his brother, and so acts as a man, who, though not particularly cowardly, is not particularly brave, often will act when he finds he has no one whom he can depend upon. I once had to go to a village, near which a brother missionary lay ill, in order to warn him of an ex- Caution not Cowardice 95 pected attack on the village by a hostile marauding band. I arrived at the village about midnight, and asked two of the men who were with me, and who were armed with breechloaders, if they would go up and give the alarm at the house, as I was tired with the walk. They were afraid to go, as the enemy, it was feared, might be lying in wait on the way ; but they were willing enough to do so when I offered to accompany them, although I had no weapon of any kind with me. Wherever I have travelled, I have found it the same ; if the native knows you, he will stand by you, and cheerfully go through dangers with you. I have found it the same even with the Zanzibari, unless, of course, the Arab comes into the question, under which circum- stances, if he were to fight for you, he would be fighting against his own master, which you could hardly expect him to do ; for the Zanzibari is the Arab's slave, even when he calls himself ' mngivana ' or ' free man.' But even under these circumstances he will not attack you himself. He will simply leave you undefended. At the time of the war between the Germans and Arabs on the East Coast, in 1888, Mr. Ashe from Uganda, and my wife with her baby and myself, were coming down country with a caravan composed largely of Zanzibaris ; when the 96 The People news reached us that the Arab Governor of the nearest coast town had ordered all white people and their native servants to be killed, and as we were the only white people near, he had sent up a well-armed convoy to destroy our caravan. The Zanzibaris came to us and told us the news ; said that they were only slaves ; that, therefore, though they would fight for our safety willingly enough against the interior natives, they could not fight against their own masters ; but that they would not help them injure us, and would go to a village near, so as to be out of the way until, as they delicately put it, it was all over. Even, then, one of their number was found who, with an Mnyamwezi, wil- lingly risked his life to take a message to the coast. So we wrote a tiny letter to the Consul-General, Colonel Euan-Smith, sewed it up in the seam of some calico they were wearing, took away their guns and other modern appliances, and gave them spears and bows and arrows, and disguised them as up-country natives. They travelled only by night, and in four days reached the coast town, where they were searched for letters, as all people from the interior were just then. However, they looked such savages that the search was not very careful, and they were allowed to go across to Zanzibar, when they at once Messengers in Disguise 97 took our letter to the Consul-General, who obtained from the Sultan a letter to the Arab Governor, order- ing him to escort us down from our place of refuge, and making him responsible for our safety. Directly this order came up country, our Zanzibaris returned to us, and willingly helped us to get to the coast. I was sorry to read in Professor Drummond's ' Tropical Africa ' the following description of the Zanzibari : ' Here (Zanzibar) these black villains the porters, the necessity and the despair of travellers, the scum of old slave gangs, and the fugitives from justice from every tribe, congregate for hire. And if there is one thing on which African travellers are for once agreed, it is that for laziness, ugliness, stupidness, and wickedness these men are not to be matched on any continent in the world.'* As regards the honesty of these porters, it fell to my lot in one period of a little over a year to arrange for the transit to or through Mpwapwa from the coast of over one thousand man-loads of goods. They were all brought up at intervals by Zanzibaris, and the head-man in charge was nearly always a Zanzibari. Yet when I came to check off the in- voices and compare them with the goods, I found * 'Tropical Africa,' p. 5. 7 98 The People all correct with the exception of one-third of a load of cloth, which had evidently been stolen by a Zanzibar porter, as he had dropped some of his dirty playing cards in while ransacking the bale. I have no great admiration for the morals of the Zanzibari ; but I have known him for some years, and I must admit that he is, as a rule, surprisingly honest, kind-hearted, and faithful to his employer ; and Captain Hore, who has known him about three times as long as I have, bears the same testimony to his worth. It is quite true that the native con- verts are better people to have on a mission station. What should we mean by conversion if they were not ? And it is the case that the presence of Zan- zibaris as workers at a mission station, with all their Arabian morals, is often a distinct disadvantage from a missionary's point of view. But though we may not desire them as co-workers in missionary effort, we have no right to deny their good and praiseworthy qualities, or libel them in such a wholesale way as is sometimes done, because they possibly tax the small stock of patience of an occa- sional traveller. The native method of obtaining fire is ingenious, but only occasionally put into practice. A small log of dead wood is selected, and a hole half the size of Making Fire 99 the last joint of the little finger made in it. This log is now steadied by the native who seats himself on the ground for that purpose, and holds it with his feet ; then taking a pointed stick, and inserting the point into the hole in the log, he rapidly twists it between his opened palms. The resulting friction first warms the wood, and then heats it to such an extent that it sets fire either to some tinder which he has previously placed round it, or, if the wood be dry, to the log itself. But this method is rarely required. In the villages fires are always kept burning, whilst on the march the camping-places frequently have fires smouldering. Occasionally at such places a fallen tree will be lit at one end, and left to smoulder. I have seen such a tree burning, and, repassing the same place four or five days later, have found it still alight. When the camping-place is in a village, the native usually takes a potsherd and obtains a fragment of live fuel from one of the huts ; but even when all these things fail, he will light some tinder by the flint-lock of his gun, or by exploding a percussion cap, sooner than go to the trouble of obtaining fire by friction. The Africans are a very musical race, and have many different kinds of instruments ; but everywhere the same style of music. The commonest instrument 7— -2 ioo The People is a kind of banjo made by fastening a large hollow gourd on to the wood of a bow tightly strung. The notes are produced by tapping the string with a slight wooden bar, and modified by pressing the open end of the gourd against the chest, or releasing it. Another less common instrument is like the toy which children at home play on, composed of a number of slips of glass fastened on two parallel pieces of string and struck by a light rod. In Africa pieces of very hard wood of graduated sizes take the place of the glass slips, and they are fastened on two parallel lines — the one made of a bar of wood, and the other of a piece of string or a strip of leather; another piece of hard wood forms the striker. The music generally consists of a few bars containing each two or three notes, of which the following is an example : -,— T p j — i - 1 T p j — — \-t This is repeated over and over again, and sounds rather monotonous to European ears ; but appears to have a peculiar exciting effect upon the native players, making them chant or play faster and faster until the climax is reached, and the time gradually slows down ; but whether fast or slow, the time is always remarkably good. They evidently have a African Music 101 very clear idea of false notes, as frequently one player corrects the other for singing or playing a false note. A duet is sometimes played on the second instrument described, the hands of the per- formers constantly crossing during the performance of the piece ; and it is amusing to see one, evidently the leader, scolding his companion for playing false notes or making mistakes which could only be dis- covered by the most educated ear, as it all sounds alike to the uninitiated listener. Sometimes the performers break out into song, and a third occa- sionally joins in upon a kind of flute, or rather flageolet, blown from the end like a penny whistle, which emits sounds absurdly like those produced by the highland bagpipes. On the march the porters often sing to relieve the monotony of the way ; and their chant, though most monotonous, has a certain soothing effect, which makes listening to it quite a pleasure. One, evidently the leader, begins with a sort of recitative, which he intones ; and at the conclusion of this, two sets of men sing alternately as a chorus a two-syllabled word. For instance, one set sing : _ . CJ and the other : e ya he ya 102 The People As they do so, they catch each other up in admirable time, though there may be twenty or thirty voices in each set, and separated some distance as they walk single file ; sometimes pitching the notes high, some- times low, with apparently no rule, though there evidently must be one, as there is nothing to jar even the most sensitive ear. At other times they will all sing in unison the following chorus : he ya he ya repeating it over and over again, sometimes for many minutes together. It is difficult to describe the effect of this wild- sounding monotonous chant ; but no one could hear it without being struck with the fascination there is to keep repeating it, and its soothing effect. The hammock-bearers, too, separated from the caravan, often keep up a song of their own as they carry the traveller at an easy trot. Frequently the song is only four words, repeated over and over again to two or three notes of music ; but sometimes long descriptive pieces of poetry are set to the same few notes, and still the time is kept admirably ; whilst at other times a comparatively short song is set to a Descriptive Poetry 103 much more elaborate piece of music, as in the fol- lowing specimen :* Moderate Jog, jog, jog, thro' thick-et and thorn. Now we reach the jun-gle. Ngo, ngo, ngo, na se-nge-re - te. Tu - ngi • ra ma-kwa-wa. :f r Xow we reach the jun - gle. Now we reach the jun - gle. Tu - ngi - ra ma ■ kwa - wa. Tu - ngi • ra ma - kwa - wa. V \A \ \ 1 i(n 1 r* 1 I.VI/ m m J ^ : V 9 • -J- 4- Now we reach the jun-gle so dark. Tu - ngi - ra ma - ko - le • re • wa. It is strange how well even the savage, uncultured natives understand the rules of chanting. As regards the morals of the African native, I think the most striking feature, to a European, is his want of truthfulness. He apparently has no conception of the value or desirability of real truth- fulness, and I suppose this feature he shares with most Eastern nations. Even amongst the Jews lying does not seem to have been definitely forbidden * For this piece of Kinyamwezi music and the words (which are translated somewhat freely) I am indebted to the kindness of my friend, the Rev. W. E. Taylor, of the Church Missionary Society in East Africa. 104 The People in the decalogue, except where, as in the cases considered in the ninth commandment, it caused injury to a man's neighbours. You can only teach the African the meaning of truth by being scrupu- lously truthful yourself, especially in bargaining, a very large item of one's existence in the interior. Of the sinfulness of drunkenness they also have no idea. Beer is only brewed two or, at most, three times a year as a rule, and on these occasions a whole village settles down to a steady drinking bout for two or three days, the drinking being accompanied by a monotonous chant, and equally monotonous incessant drumming, which never ceases day nor night, relays of drummers succeeding one another, until the bout is over, or everyone is hopelessly and incapably drunk. Once I had been reading through St. Luke with a native whom I was attending for a gunshot wound in the thigh. One day he informed me in an innocent way that he was going to get drunk on the morrow, evidently thinking that it would be a piece of information that would interest me, as I often inquired about native customs. Near the coast a kind of wine called ' tembo ' is made from cocoa-nut sap, and this is obtainable all the year round ; hence drunkenness is far more prevalent at the coast than in the interior. To Palm Wine 105 obtain this sap an incision is made into the stalk of a bunch of quite immature cocoa-nuts ; beneath the incision a little bucket, usually made from a cocoa- nut shell, is secured and left there. The tree, at the OBTAINING COCOA-NUT SAP. YOUNG COCOA-NUT TREE very summit of which is the fruit, has steps cut into it the whole way up ; and by these steps the natives easily ascend to secure the cup full of sap, and replace it by an empty one. 106 The People In their outward behaviour before Europeans, the people are quite decent. In fact, a white man living amongst them will probably gauge their sin- fulness in this direction to some extent by his own. If he is as careful of propriety in Central Africa as he would be in his own English home, he will probably find the natives extremely careful in their behaviour before him ; and he may live amongst them for months, or years, without ever being offended by even an improper gesture on their part. Again, if he shows no pleasure in hearing descrip- tions of the unholy practices of the heathen, he will have none given to him. In this way he will fail to describe a part, and perhaps a not unim- portant part, of the life of the Central African ; but it is a loss not to be regretted. Can a man touch pitch, and not be himself defiled ? BANJO CHAPTER IV THE DAILY LIFE OF THE PEOPLE The daily life of the people can perhaps be best understood by a description of the events which occur during a day or two at some important village such as Mpwapwa. This village consists of a collection of about a hundred tembes, scattered over an area about two miles by one, each tembe sheltering three or four families, usually of people related to one another. On one occasion when I slept in such a tembe, I had to remain there until nearly mid-day, and so had the opportunity of observing all the consecutive occupations of the inmates. At daybreak, which occurred about a quarter- past five, there was a stir amongst the sleeping forms, which up to this time had been wrapped in the light calico sheets which served as their garments in the daytime, and their bedclothes at night. They turned sleepily over, yawned, stretched io8 The Daily Life of the People themselves, and then gave a shiver ; for the early morning, though warm enough to a man under blankets, was not very comforting to those whose only protection was one thickness of light calico. The women were, as usual, the first to rise, and got up, some from their resting-places on the ground, others from their simple native bedsteads, consisting of a light framework of wood, with an ox-hide stretched tightly across. The two or three yards of calico which had formed the wrap for the night was now re-arranged, and tucked round the waist as a sort of skirt. One of the children then brought a small gourd of water, which he carefully poured little by little over his mother's hands, who first washed her own hands and face, and then pro- ceeded to perform the same office for her smaller children, an attention which they did not appear to appreciate. The next duty which fell upon the women and children was to sweep out the hut with brooms formed of one-foot lengths of ribbon-like grass tied together in bundles. They were most careful to sweep the hardened mud floor thoroughly, and this they did every day. If it were not for this, the place would soon have rapidly swarmed with vermin from the old animals in the courtyard, and from the calves, kids, lambs, and dogs, which slept Milking the Cows 109 inside the huts with the natives. I slept more than once in a hut, but was never troubled with vermin, so careful are the women to keep their floors well swept. By the time the sweeping had commenced, the lords of creation had roused themselves ; and after a similar re-arrangement of dress, and like ablutions, they re- freshed themselves with a draught of water or some milk, and then helped the women fasten up the cows previous to their being milked, this duty being per- formed by the women. In Africa the cows will only yield their milk if they believe that the calf is abstract- ing it. So, in order to deceive the animal, the calf was allowed to commence operations, but after a few mouthfuls was tied up close to its mother's side, just out of reach of her udder, whilst one of the women, sitting down on a log of wood, placed an empty gourd in her lap, and rapidly milked the cow into it. When the supply of milk began to fail, the calf was again allowed to help itself to a few mouth- fuls, which stimulated the mother into yielding a little more milk to the dusky milkmaid ; but when this second stimulation had ceased to render any result, the calf was loosed, and allowed to extract what it could for its own benefit. A cow in East Equatorial Africa rarely yields much over three no The Daily Life of the People pints of milk a day, which is not surprising when one considers the scantiness of the herbage. The milk, besides being scanty, is occasionally tainted by the herbage on which the animal has fed, and often after it has fed on the rich rank grass in some marshy spot the milk is quite offensive. The gourds into which the milk was received were kept clean as far as natives could clean them ; but rinsing with cold water will not remove the traces of sour milk from a wooden vessel, especially in a hot climate, and consequently milk received into these gourds becomes at once mixed with ferment from the old milk, and rapidly turns sour. This condition is not objected to by the natives, who either drink their milk sour, or else keep it until it is rancid, when they churn from it the butter which they use to anoint their bodies with. I have never seen this churning, but I believe that it is effected by shaking up the milk in a gourd. When a calf dies, its mother refuses to give any more milk ; but I believe that the skin of the calf, carefully dried, is used for deceiving her, and that if it is placed beside her at milking-time so that she can smell it, she will continue to give her milk for a long time after the animal's death. I have never had an opportunity of seeing this fraud practised. Cooking Breakfast 1 1 1 The work of milking having been accomplished, the women commenced to cook the morning meal, which consisted of ugali (thick porridge) and uji (gruel), made from ground mtama (millet seed). When mtama is not obtainable, muhindi (Indian corn) is used instead ; but it is not considered so satisfying, and consequently is not so highly valued as mtama. The men and women now sat in little groups round the fires over which their food had been cooked, and ate their morning's meal, which in the case of the children consisted of uji, whilst the men and women had ugali. The men, and some of the chief women also, took with their food some kind of relish (kitiweyo), such as a piece of dried meat, or some roast beans or pumpkins. The food is not all ' dished up ' in the same way ; the more solid ugali is turned out into a wicker- work dish, or rough native earthen basin, and pieces are broken off and eaten by the men sitting round ; but the gruel-like uji remains in the pot in which it was cooked, and when it is sufficiently cool, the children, sitting round, each dip in their hands or a couple of fingers, and, withdrawing them, with great gusto lick off all the adhering uji. Hot gruel is very cleansing, and the hands, which are often very dirty before the meal, are usually remarkably clean after it. ii2 The Daily Life of the People It was now about eight o'clock, and the men strolled outside the hut or smoked a pipe inside ; whilst the women nursed their infants, or, assisted by the children, washed up the few cooking pots. Not a long process, one would think ; but all such domestic processes are long where there are no household conveniences in the shape of washtubs, towels, dusters, taps, sinks, and the like. Those who have gone on an expedition by river in England with a tent and a few requisites know the unex- pectedly long time which it takes to get breakfast ready, and the still longer time which is spent in the apparently simple operation of washing up the dishes afterwards. Towards nine o'clock the cattle were let out, and were taken by one or two of the elder boys to their usual pastures, and to water. As a general rule the elder boys are set to look after the cows, the younger ones after the goats and sheep. Until they are five the younger boys remain at home and play with each other ; after that age, for a year or two, until they are old enough to take charge of the goats on the nearer pastures, they either follow their mothers and elder sisters down to the well for water, or else go with their brothers who are tending the herds, though they do not themselves give any Dangers to Cattle 1 1 3 assistance. These little mites often strike up great friendships with the smaller animals. I have often seen a little boy cuddling a lamb, or kneeling down with his arms round the neck of a calf, hugging and kissing it. The natives are very particular not to let the cattle out before about nine in the morning, on account of the dew with which the long grass is saturated, and which is rarely all evaporated in the rainy season until the sun is half-way up in the heavens. Allow- ing cattle to wander about in the damp grass is a fruitful source of illness and death. The natives and Arabs know this, and are very careful ; but strangers do not always know it, and occasionally suffer loss in consequence. Soon after the herds had gone, the women, some with their babies slung on their backs, and the elder girls took their earthen waterpots and their calabashes and started off to fetch water from a three-foot well sunk in the river bed a mile away, laughing and chattering merrily as they went. An hour later they returned, and we saw them coming up the slope with their heavy burdens, freely per- spiring in the tropical sun. Silently and slowly they toiled up the hill, reserving all conversation for another time when they would be a little less short 8 ii4 The Daily Life of the People of breath. As they passed beyond us, and we turned round to gaze at them, we saw far beyond them, on the plain away in the distance, what at first sight looked not unlike an enormous column of black ants in single file, but was, as we knew, a caravan some two miles in length, straggling along in detachments of forty or fifty men each. It was evidently bound for Mpwapwa, which the nearest men would probably reach in about an hour's time. As soon as the women and girls had returned to the tembe and refreshed themselves with a short rest, they commenced the daily task of pounding corn and grinding it between two stones ; slow, heavy, laborious work, which fully occupies them for an hour or two each day. Meanwhile some of the women went off to gather as firewood the dried- up branches of dead trees and bushes near by ; whilst some of the slaves and younger men, axe in one hand, and spear or bow and arrows for protection in the other, went rather further into the forest than the women dared go, to cut off large boughs from the fallen trees in the less frequented places, far enough off to be not yet denuded of firewood. These men came back after three hours' absence, when the sun had been descend- ing for two hours, and found on their return that A False Alarm i i 5 there had been a great scare in the village. One or two men who had been herding their cattle a mile from the village on the very outskirts of the forest — too dangerous a place in which to trust boys with the care of these animals — had been heard to shout the war cry, and seen commencing to urge their cattle towards home at a gallop. Other herds- men near took up the cry, and passed it on to yet others, until soon the whole village was in a state of excitement. The cause of this alarm was that the originator of the scare had assured himself that he had seen the zebra-hide-covered shield of a Mhehe lurking in the forest, and as no Mhehe was likely to be lurking alone thirty miles from his own village, there could be no reasonable doubt that he was but one of many others who had concealed themselves more carefully. The cattle being now out of danger, a small party of men, with ancient guns, proceeded to the point of danger. Seeing the commotion from the roof of my house two miles away, I ran down towards it with my boy, who carried for our protection a formidable looking double-barrelled breechloader, which, however, was quite useless, as the breech had got jammed so that it could not be loaded. But my boy did not mind that, as he felt sure no one would attack 8—2 1 1 6 The Daily Life of the People him with such a weapon in his possession. When we arrived at the scene of danger, rather out of breath with our long run, but hoping to be rewarded by the sight of a band of Wahehe in their picturesque war-paint, we discovered that the alarmist had truly enough seen the zebra skin as he described ; but that it was still gracing the exterior of its original possessor, who had not yet been persuaded to part with his hide, and who had at once betaken himself into the depths of the forest at the sight of such an unusual commotion. After a hearty laugh all round at the man's expense, we returned to the village, and there found that the large caravan which we had seen in the distance had arrived ; and that it had taken up its quarters down by the river bed, amongst the shade of the stately fig-sycamores. The leaders, we heard, were contemplating a pro- longed stay of two days, for the purpose of drying their bales of calico, which had been soaked by the unexpectedly heavy rains of the previous few days. Two or three miles of this material lay on the bushes around, drying in the tropical sun, giving the camp the appearance of an enormous laundry establishment. During the afternoon the porters from this caravan came up into the village to barter their goods for Hurried Cooking 1 1 7 fowls and grain. For this purpose they brought with them cloth, wire, tobacco, and little supplies of gunpowder, perhaps half an ounce, wrapped up in dirty pieces of rag. With these they purchased the fowls and grain they required, pounded the latter in the mortar, lent by the seller, some of the more energetic also grinding it on his stones ; but most of them were too lazy or too tired to perform this further labour, and took the grain back to camp there to boil and eat it whole. The mass so cooked, though it appeased the pangs of hunger, was of little use as food, and could hardly supply them with much staying power. Indeed, a walk through the camp, after the departure of the caravan, showed unmistakably that such food passes unaltered through the alimentary canal. During the afternoon the elder men lolled in the shade, smoking pipes and listening to the news from the coast ; whilst two also occupied themselves in unravelling calico, and then used the unravelled threads to sew the cloth together with, and another lazily ornamented a spear-handle with brass wire during the intervals of smoke and conversation. The children played or tended the herds, and the women continued their usual work of pounding, winnowing, and grinding corn, or else plaited baskets n8 The Daily Life of the People with dried reeds or grass. Apart from these, under the shade of another tembe close by, we noticed a young Mgogo carefully combing out and plaiting the locks of another man's hair. He used a comb with about a dozen large teeth, and having carefully combed one portion of his friend's rather matted shock of hair, plaited it up into rows of little pig- tails, deftly weaving narrow bands of tough dried grass in each little tail, and finishing off by tying all together into one large tail, the end of which he neatly bound round with one or two dozen turns of the dried grass-bands. This hair-plaiting is such a complicated matter, and entails so much fine work, that a man cannot do it for himself, and so each native is dependent on his neighbour for his toilet. Even with the advantage which position gives them in working upon each other's heads, it takes two or three days to finish off one head in really correct style. On my way to my house I met two Arabs, who were coming up from the camp, bringing with them a cheap Winchester repeating-rifle which would not work, and which they wished me to mend. This I was unable to do, or to give them a new key for the lock of a box, of which they had lost the proper one. They were much disappointed, as they had been counting for days on getting all put right, when A. 'W •V- > - *FVB- rr'.i b>. I s t A3- Ky Medical Work \ 1 9 once they arrived at the station where the English- man lived. Then they asked me to take charge of a load of cloth, which they were hoping the chief of the village would recover for them from a runaway porter, who had deserted a few miles from their present camp. This I willingly agreed to do, and a few days later the cloth was brought to me b}' the chief, who had caught the runaway in the meantime, and secured his spoil. This business transacted, I went down with them to the camp to see a sick Arab, who was suffering from an abscess in the foot, which had made the long daily marches almost unbearable to him. A timely incision with the lancet gave him immediate relief, to his great delight, and I told him to send up to the house for some dress- ings for his foot, for use on the march during the next few days. The dressing of a few ulcers and the extraction of a tooth completed my labours amongst them. They had but recently started from the coast, so that not many casualties were to be expected amongst them. Later in the afternoon the women and elder girls again went down to the river-bed to fetch the supply of water for the night and early morning. Many of them went up the stream to a part where it was still running before it sank out of sight under its sandy 120 The Daily Life of the People bed, and there refreshed themselves by a bathe in its clear waters. On their return to the village they met the herds of cattle being driven home for the night ; so, after they had put down their gourds of water, they tied up the cows and milked them again. With these women came a woman whom I employed to bring water daily for the house, but she carried a bucket on her head instead of a gourd, and prevented the water from splashing over by floating on it a few leaves and twigs. I should not have supposed this would have interfered with the motion of the water, but it did so most effectually. The sun was now approaching the horizon, and shortly after six it set. The darkness then came on rapidly, though not by any means so instantaneously as one would imagine from some descriptions ; yet a quarter of an hour after sunset the dusk was beginning to deepen, the herds were safe inside the tembe courtyards, and the fowls had retired into the tembes for the night, the natives began to gather near their tembes, the camp fires were lit in the caravan down by the river-bed, and for a few minutes an intense silence seemed to fall upon nature, broken only by the frequent call of guinea-fowl, quail, and smaller birds to each other, as they sought the safe retreat of the trees. It was a few minutes' silence A Deafening Din 1 2 1 only, and then the almost deafening din of myriads of insects broke upon the ear. The African insects seem to reserve their whole energy for the half hour of dusk, moderate quietness prevailing the rest of the twenty-four hours, except in the deeper forests, where the permanent dusk gives the insects the idea of perpetual sunset, and incites them to an unend- ing low but piercing din. Darkness stole on apace, and by half-past six only a glimmer of light could be seen far down in the west. The camp fires now showed up well in the darkness, and also a fire a mile long on a distant hill, where the natives some- what late in the season had been burning down the trees, bushes, and long grass to make a clearing for a farm. This fire had been burning all the afternoon, but only the smoke had been visible before in the glare of the tropical sun. Inside the tembe the women now began to prepare the chief meal of the day, which consisted of ugali and meat — the men eating by themselves, and the women and children apart. After the meal, which was soon over, for they eat it quickly, notwithstanding the large amount which they managed to stow away, the men and elder boys sat round the log fire, and indulged in another smoke and talk over the events of the day, the prospects of the weather, and the 122 The Daily Life of the People likelihood of a neighbouring chief coming to make an attack upon them. There had been several raids of late, in some of which this chief's men had once or twice carried off a child or woman, and once had killed a woman at one of the outlying huts ; though most of the raids had ended, as usual, in both parties shouting and violently threatening each other, and then retiring, feeling that the claims of justice and honour had been satisfied. There was, however, not much likelihood of more attacks being made that season. The time for cultivating had just com- menced, and natives then (except such as the Masai, who do not cultivate, considering it to be menial work), have no leisure for marauding expeditions. They put off all such excitements until the more serious duties of the season are over. Nor do they fight during harvest, for to attack a neighbouring village at such a time would be to tempt the injured party to retaliate by coming over to burn the marauders' crops, and under these conditions both parties would have much to lose and little to gain. An African is a born bargainer, and carries his com- mercial principles with him into battle. War with him, in fact, is a species of trade, in which he endeavours to obtain by force and fraud what he has failed to get by fraud and hard bargaining. It is Economical Warfare 123 frequently conducted on strictly economical prin- ciples, and he realizes that the time to throw stones has not arrived whilst as yet he is living in a glass house. But the harvest safely gathered in, and all his grain and goods secure in his fortress-like tembe, he feels that he cannot do better than spend some of his spare time in the speculation of war. A chief who dabbles in this science has to carefully balance his accounts after each engagement. The value of a man is accurately known in cows ; so many to a man (usually five), so many to a woman, so many to a child ; and when the value of the booty has been summed up, from it has to be subtracted the value of the lives lost, and a balance on the wrong side soon deters a chief from continuing such engagements. It is this commercial instinct that makes the lives of the white man's mail-men so comparatively safe in Central Africa. They go often, only three in number, half across Africa ; but they go well armed, and the natives on the regularly-traversed route soon dis- cover that they carry only letters and books, which, to an African, is rubbish, if not worse (i.e., witchcraft), and that attacking them means almost certain injury, if not death, to some of the attacking force, whilst there is nothing to be gained in the way of plunder as compensation. 1 24 The Daily Life of the People By nine o'clock most of the natives had retired to rest, though a few men still remained up to talk over old times with an Mnyamwezi slave who had lived for a time in Mpwapwa some years back, and who was now passing by again for the first time since his departure, as he was on his way up country in the large caravan of the Arab which had just arrived. But soon even these turned in, and now nothing disturbed the stillness of the night but the melan- choly hooting of owls, the continual croaking of frogs rejoicing at the advent of the rainy season, the frequent harsh, grating chirp of the enormous grasshoppers, or the occasional howl of an hyena, or bark of an antelope or jackal. The night passed as usual without any exciting occurrence, and next morning the daily routine commenced in the same way as on the previous one. But this was to be a more busy day, as the rains had softened the soil sufficiently to allow cultivating operations to commence ; and the first attempt would be made to hoe the ground previously prepared by destruction of the undergrowth. There was also another excitement in the day's programme ; before the herd were led away to the grazing-grounds, a very lean cow, past the period of calf-bearing, was Slaughter of a Cozv 125 selected for the butcher's knife, as the presence of such a large caravan, staying as we have seen for two days, would make it worth while to slay a useless cow, as there would certainly be a great demand for fresh meat. The cow was led apart from the herd, and a native warrior, anxious for some gun practice, took his stand near the animal at the distance of only a few paces, and taking a long and patient aim fired at its body, which he succeeded in hitting. The shot, however, did not appear to do any immediate damage beyond making the animal jump, which so disturbed the aim of a second warrior, who was preparing to send another charge into it, that he fired somewhat at random and accidentally sent a bullet through its heart. The cow fell at once, and another warrior, armed with a cheap butcher's knife made of soft iron, probably in Birmingham, now seized its head and deftly cut its throat from ear to ear. After all bleeding had ceased, the animal was skinned, disembowelled, and hacked to pieces with knives and blunt hatchets. An hour later, after much shouting, bargaining, wrangling, laughing and joking, the whole animal had been disposed of, and the owner sat down to count his gains— calico, coloured cloths, gunpowder, percussion caps, tobacco, beads, wire, cheap knives 126 The Daily Life of the People of soft iron, and hoes, forming the chief articles of barter which he had acquired. The usual early morning's work finished, several of the women, and some of the men of low degree, went off to the tract of land about a mile away from the tembe, which the owner had lately marked out for cultivation, and had cleared of undergrowth and grass by burning. Amongst the East African tribes a man's title to land ,seems to be acquired in the same way that it is in civilized countries. The forest and waste lands which lie between the villages belong to no one ; anyone may clear and till as many acres as he chooses to, and whatever he tills becomes his property. If he sows it one year, he will probably let it lie fallow the next, but it still remains his until it has become completely over- grown again with trees — not with brushwood merely, for in such a hot climate brushwood springs up again in a very few months after the rains. At his death his cultivated land, together with his other property, huts, treasures, wives, children, all goes to his heir, who is usually his eldest surviving brother. In this way the land in the villages, as well as that on the outskirts, was no doubt originally obtained, and now passes on from heir to heir. When I wanted land near the village, I went to the chief, who asked Buying Land 127 me for what I required it, and it was given to me at the rate of about sixpence an acre ; but I think that the chief's permission is asked by each native before he tills near the village, not so much because the chief owns the land, as because he owns the man who wants to till it, and who must just as much obtain his leave before he pays a visit to a neigh- bouring village as before he takes twenty acres of land from the forest. But to return to our labourers who had just arrived at the clearing. They at once set to work, and continued for two or three hours hoeing the ground up into ridges about eighteen inches high, and in this way well broke up the ground for twelve inches below the surface. Some days later, when the whole clearing had been well hoed, the same people would walk alongside each ridge, make holes with a stick at intervals of a few inches, carefullv drop one or two seeds into each, and then cover them over with soil. There is no wasting of seed here, no sowing on the roadside, or in shallow rocky ground. Later on, when the young corn began to sprout, women would walk along each furrow, and great pains would be taken to root up every weed that endeavoured to put in an appearance ; and at last when the corn was ripening into heads of grain, 128 The Daily Life of the People small boys would be sent to watch the fields all day long, and frighten off every bird that tried to approach ; no easy task in a land where there are such immense flocks of very small birds as there are in Africa. Whilst these people were cultivating the farm, or shamba, as it is called, two natives were engaged in the village in burning charcoal. They selected very hard close-grained wood, which they cut into blocks, stacked, and then burnt under a covering of clay. The resulting charcoal in small pieces was placed in a basket and set aside for use next day at the forge, for there was one tembe which possessed a small forge, and had inmates who could work it. Some distance off we noticed a few men who were building a new tembe, not far from their old one. They used chiefly new wood for the purpose, but also drew largely upon the old tembe for such timbers as had not been destroyed by the rains or the ravages of the white ants. Tembes rarely last much over ten years, even with frequent patching ; as the white ants destroy most of the timbers by that time, and even where they do not, a tembe has often to be evacuated on account of what, for euphony's sake, we might call ' the drains going wrong.' The natives bury their relatives inside the Woman s Work 129 tembes, and usually not very deeply under the floor, and too many relatives so close underneath is apt to make even a native feel the desirability of change of air. It looked at first sight as if the men were doing the work, and the women tendering a little assistance ; but we noticed on closer inspection that though the men were standing in a conspicuous place on a portion of the newly-made flat roof, arranging the stones and clay on it, the women were bringing the heavy loads of stone and clay from a distance and lifting them on to the roof. It was quite in keeping with what is considered woman's work in Africa. Our mistake reminded me of the story of the young Irishman who was delighted at being engaged as a hodman. ' You will have no work to do,' said the sympathetic contractor; 'you have only got to carry bricks up a ladder, and the man at the top does all the work.' Towards mid-day we heard a great deal of shout- ing at the foot of the hill, and were told that some native hunters returning from a week's chase were rejoicing with their friends over their spoil. They had killed an elephant with their poisoned arrows, and had brought back in addition to the ivory a good supply of elephant meat. This appeared to consist of the skin and flesh cut into long strips 9 130 The Daily Life of the People about three inches wide and two thick, somewhat resembling leather straps, and not altogether unlike them in flavour and consistency, whilst three days exposure to the sun and flies had not improved their odour. I bought two strips for my dogs to eat. They were greatly pleased at first, and set to with a will, but after fifteen minutes' hard work they had reluctantly to admit that they had attempted a task beyond their powers, and that elephant meat baffled even a mastiff's jaws. Whilst the meat was being disposed of, a caravan of about two hundred porters from the far interior, consisting chiefly of slaves, began to approach the village and to form their camp near that of the large caravan which had arrived on the previous day. The greater part of the loads was made up of tusks, some of eighty or even ninety pounds weight ; far too heavy for one man to carry, but carried, never- theless, by some of the more powerful slaves. Many of the smaller tusks weighing from ten to thirty pounds each were tied into bundles of three, and each bundle carried as one burden. Besides ivory there was quite an assortment of miscellaneous articles, which the owners were only too ready to barter to a white man. One brought me a baby ostrich, about the size of a turkey, which he wanted Miscellaneous Occupations 131 me to buy for fifteen rupees ; and another brought me a talking parrot from Manyuema on the Upper Congo, the country of Tipoo Tib, for which he suggested I should give him forty rupees. 1 did, in the end, purchase some cloth made from the bark of trees which came from Uganda, and a baby gazelle, looking like a rat on stilts, which the boys and I fed most carefully with milk and water from a baby's feeding bottle : a process, however, which it did not long survive, though it took very kindly to it at first. Early in the afternoon the women and slaves returned from the shamba which they had been cultivating, and recommenced their miscellaneous occupations. One man made holes with a hot iron in some axe-handles, which he had roughly carved out of a piece of wood the week before. He worked at each hole and kept trimming and enlarging it until the long narrow wedge-shaped axe-head could pass one-third of its length through and then be gripped. This is the only fastening which the axe- head has, and consequently it not infrequently comes out during use ; but then it is quite easily replaced. Another man was cutting little stools out of the trunk of a fallen tree which happened to be of the required diameter. The tree selected for this 9—2 132 The Daily Life of the People purpose is always one with hard wood, frequently the ebony tree, and the little three-legged stool, with a disc above and below, is cut out in one piece, and then trimmed with a hot iron and a knife — a long process, and one which would be very tiring if it were not that the artist took plenty of time over it ; as, indeed, a native does over every kind of work. The number of hours which a native works is very little criterion of the amount of labour which he performs. Although, as on the day we are describing, we frequently see different people doing different duties, there is very little real division of labour. All the people turn their hands to everything, and the difference between the individual workers consists in the fact that some seem incapable of performing some duties, and consequently relegate them to all the others, rather than that any are considered adepts at any particular kind of work. It is as if, in England, everyone should paint pictures for sale and sing in concerts, except those very few people who were either colour blind, or deaf to the difference between harmony and discord. There was a good deal of excitement in the village this afternoon, owing to the discovery that six of the chief's donkeys, which he had lost a week Arab Cunning 133 previously, were in the caravan that had just come from the interior ; the Arab leader of which asserted that he had bought them from a caravan passing westward, which he had met a few days back. There was little doubt that they had been stolen by the leader of this westward-going caravan, and sold by him to the Arab in charge of the other, who would be able to buy them for a trifle, knowing that he had to run the risk of getting them safely through Mpwapwa. After a great deal of altercation between the chief and the Arab, and after solemn protesta- tions by the latter that he had purchased them in the innocence of his heart, and assurances that he could not possibly afford to give up animals, such wretched animals, too, for which, being in great need of them, he had had to pay such a high price, they finally agreed to share losses, and each to take half the donkeys. This matter settled, the Arab asked me if I would come down to the camp with him, and see some of his sick people. On the way we passed two Wagogo in full war dress and paint. They looked very proud of themselves, and told me that they were going away for a few days to a Masai village some fifty miles off, to see some friends of theirs. They could speak the Masai language, a rare accomplishment amongst the Wagogo : as the 134 The Daily Life of the People languages are not at all akin, as we have seen. A little further on a couple of boys brought me a small kingfisher, which one of them had shot with an arrow, blunted at the end so as not to injure the plumage ; for which they asked me to give them some sweetmeats. I told them to bring me the bird when I went home again ; so they wandered off quite happily, with their arms round each other's waists. The boys and young men often go about in couples like this, and really seem very much attached to one another. There seems to be more affection between men and men, and between women and women, than between the sexes. As I was passing my milkman's hut, I stopped to have a talk with him, as I wanted to purchase milk from him by the fortnight, instead of, as usual, by the month, or rather, moon ; but I could not get him to see that one doti (four yards) of calico every fortnight was as good pay, in fact rather better, than two dotis a month. The man refused to let me have the milk on these terms ; so I was obliged to give in, and let him supply it on his own terms. I found the same difficulty in explaining to natives who did daily work, that an upande (two yards) of calico every two days, was the same pay as twelve upandes a month of twenty- four working days. Care of Trees 135 The natives everywhere seem to have very rudi- mentary ideas of arithmetic ; and the few calcula- tions that they do, they usually work out upon their fingers, as would be done by a little child in England. When we arrived at the camp, we found that there was an altercation going on between an Mgogo sub-chief and some Zanzibaris. The latter, members of the caravan that I had come to visit, were lighting their camp-fires as usual at the foot of a splendid fig-sycamore. These trees, not many in number, only grew along the moist stream valley ; and were being gradually destroyed by the camp-fires which were so frequently lit first at the base, and then in the hollow which previous fires had excavated. Of course such a hollow made a capital fireplace, sheltered from gusts of wind, whilst the over-hang- ing well-foliaged branches of the great tree protected the whole camp from the sun in the day-time and the dew or rain at night. After examining all the sick people, it was evident that two of them were too ill to travel ; and the Arab asked me to take care of them until his return from the interior, which I agreed to do for a shilling a week, the actual cost of their food. The unfortunate creatures were suffering from dysentery, and were so 136 The Daily Life of the People extremely emaciated, that one died a few days after he came to me ; but rest, warmth, good food, and medicine pulled the other through. On my return to the house, my boy told me that the natives at a tembe close by wanted me to lend them a steel-trap, as a leopard had just come down from the hill ; and in broad daylight, a most unusual time for such an attack, had attempted to carry off a goat which had wandered a little apart from the flock. The little boys who were tending the goats had bravely rushed at the animal with their spears; and he had at once dropped his victim, leaving it dead on the ground, and retreated up the hill under cover of the brushwood. The natives knew fhat he would return at dusk to look for his prey, and they were anxious to trap him when he did so. My boy took the trap over to the place ; and having securely lashed the body of the goat to the stumps of two trees, tied the trap firmly over it. Towards sunset, an Mgogo sub-chief came up to the house with his wife, as she was suffering from an inflamed ear, which he wished me to treat. She was a very light-skinned woman, hardly darker than some Italians, and her husband was very fond of her. The higher classes of natives seemed often to be fond of their wives, and also of their children. Discipline for the Young 137 They would carry the latter long distances to get them attended to at the dispensary, and they looked after them very tenderly when they were ill. Whilst I was attending to the woman's ear, we heard violent screams from the tembe nearest to us ; and my boy told me that the owner of it was chastising one of his children for having run away to play that afternoon, whereas, as he well knew, it was his turn to herd the goats. Though both fathers and mothers are fond of their children, yet they full) r agree with Solomon, that sparing the rod is likely to spoil the child ; and they do not wish to spoil him. Although relations are attached to one another, and ties of relationship are binding, yet the effect of this is much diminished by the large number of artificial relationships which are observed, and which almost swamp the real ones. A man considers every other male member of his tribe to be his brother, and gives him the same title as the child of his own father and mother. Again, a man addresses and speaks of as ' mother ' the woman who cooks his food for him, if he happen to be a bachelor ; so that when a man travels much and lives in various villages the number of his close relations becomes apparently very large. I was very much struck with 138 The Daily Life of the People this in the case of my boy, when first I went out to Africa. Soon after he came to me he asked leave for a day's holiday, as his mother, he told me, had died, and he wished to bury her. I was very sorry for him, and at once gave him leave to go. A month later he wanted another holiday, and his mother died again. After tea my boy and I went over to a tembe near by to take some soup, thickened with rice, to an old man suffering from dysentery. We found him lying down, wrapped up in a blanket which we had lent him, and for which he was very grateful. He said that the cold wind at night no longer caused him the pain inside which he had suffered from before, and that now he slept all the night through. He only drank boiled water, which he obtained from a little kettle we had lent him. I had insisted on this, because water at this season (the commence- ment of the rains) was especially filthy ; and though only occasionally harmful to a native in good health, would be very dangerous to one already suffering from dysentery. After a time this old man got perfectly well, contrary to the expectation of all his friends ; and he became a great help to me in persuading others, when they were ill, to carefully follow out my instructions as to rest and warmth Catching a Leopard 139 and diet, which he assured them were more impor- tant than even medicine. Whilst I was examining him, we noticed a strong, rather unpleasant smell of meat in the tembe, and asked what it was caused by. He told us that they were drying some of the meat from the cow which had been killed that morning, and showed us the joints and strips of flesh hanging from the roof timbers over the part where the fires were lit, and where the women were cooking the evening meal. This meat was being dried in the usual way previous to being stored away for future use. Suddenly we were all startled by the sound of loud deep growls and horrible snarling breaking the silence of the night, coming from a hollow in the hill-side close by, and then we remem- bered that it was the spot where we had fastened the trap on the body of the goat. Evidently the leopard was caught, so off rushed the natives and my boy with spears and guns ; but the night was dark, and no one was anxious to walk unexpectedly within reach of the leopard's paw, so they approached very cautiously, stood some yards from the dim snarling figure, and commenced to fire at it. But what with the unusual darkness, and the usual bad shooting, they fired fifteen shots at him before he was killed. Next morning when I came to examine 140 The Daily Life of the People the trap, I found that a piece of scrap iron which one of the natives had fired out of his gun, had made a hole right through the strong iron plate which was between the jaws of the trap. After half an hour's absence they all came back to the tembe, bearing with them in triumph the dead leopard and the slaughtered goat. There was a great deal of rejoicing at the destruction of this enemy of the peace, and the rejoicing was consider- ably augmented by the prospect of a good feast off the carcase of the goat, which they at once com- menced to cook. Whilst the meat was being cooked, and after the excitement of the party had some- what cooled down, a young man played a mono- tonous, but not unpleasing air on the native banjo. On the way home I nearly shot one of my mastiffs. He had been walking behind me, and I thought he was still doing so, when, having wandered off through the long grass, he suddenly jumped over a bush on to the path right in front of me. In an instant my gun went up to my shoulder under the impression that it was a lioness ; but happily I discovered my mistake before it was too late. I realized then what kind of feeling it was that so frequently made the natives rush into their huts, An Azukward Mistake 141 or make a bolt up the trees when I went unex- pectedly into a village with my dogs. After reaching home I went the round of my patients to see that they were comfortable ; and this duty finished, had prayers with the boys, after which we were all glad to turn in for the night. CHAPTER V THE CLIMATE AND DISEASES An Englishman need have no difficulty in realizing for himself the climate of Africa. He has only to imagine the time from mid-day to early afternoon, on the hottest day of an unusually hot English summer, and he will understand what Eastern Equatorial Africa is like from eight in the morning to half-past four in the afternoon of the greater number of days in the year. A heavy thunderstorm on such a day, with its attendant cooling of the air, and hiding of the sun, will give him an equally true idea of the rainy season. The first thing that usually strikes an Englishman on arriving, is that the heat is not nearly so great as he had pictured to himself. In fact, if he arrived in the dry season he would very likely revel in the glorious golden sunshine of an endless August ; he would enjoy the genial warmth, and wonder why the older residents were so careful to avoid the sun, and were so far less energetic than The Unending Summer 143 himself. But as months went by he would change his opinion. The unending summer's day soon palls by repetition. The man who delights in it is perhaps seized by some attack of illness. He lies perspiring on his convalescent couch, and longs for a cool wind ; in vain he tries to shield his now weakened eyes from the splendid brilliant sunshine that he once so much enjoyed. He hopes for a cool season, for some weather to brace him up, but hopes in vain, and he begins to realize, as he never did before, the inestimable blessing of a European winter. This is the first step towards so-called acclimatisation. He has gone a few steps down the ladder of health. Soon he will reach the highest level at which it is possible for the average individual to keep in East Africa. He will cease to take quite such an interest in his work ; his head will ache more easily ; his digestion get impaired with less reason than formerly ; he will get more quickly tired after exertion of any kind. The enervating climate has done its work, and in the course of a year or two he finds himself on the level described. Later illnesses do not pull him down so much pro- portionately as the earlier ones did ; the conditions before and after attacks are less far removed than they used to be, though attacks are more prolonged ; 144 The Climate and Diseases a sore throat acquired is not easily lost ; a scratch which ought to heal in a few days becomes an indo- lent, not very troublesome, but continuing ulcer. In brief he is acclimatised, grand result ! One hears much of acclimatisation in tropical countries. I cannot speak of the condition elsewhere than in East Equatorial Africa ; but there, at any rate, I do not believe there is such a condition in the ordinary sense of the term. The man best suited to withstand the climate is the healthy man fresh out from England or elsewhere, with all his English strength and vigour. The next best man is the resident who has just returned from getting in a fresh stock of health and vigour in some temperate climate. One thing that tends to keep up the mis- taken idea that there is such a thing as acclimatisa- tion, is the obvious fact that the man who has been out longest, cseteris paribus, knows best what pre- cautions to take, and as a rule takes them, and so escapes disease which the new-comer unnecessarily lays himself open to. For the same reason, at home, the confirmed dyspeptic often lives longer than the ordinary man. He takes far greater care of himself than another man, as he knows the pain which he will suffer if he commits indiscretion, which another man may indulge in with apparent impunity, for The Rainy Seasons 145 many years at least. Yet no one would think of calling the dyspeptic a man ' acclimatised to the ills of life,' or desire the same acclimatisation for him- self. Throughout East Equatorial Africa there are two distinct rainy seasons — the lesser and the greater rains — which occur at different months at different distances from the coast. At the coast the lesser rains begin the middle of October or early in November, and last for a month or six weeks. The greater rains begin the middle of March, and last about two months. The hottest season is during the two months preceding the greater rains. Near Victoria Nyanza and Tanganyika the lesser rains do not commence until towards the end of December, and the greater rains are proportionately later.' In the intervening country, the date of the seasons approximates to that of the coast or lakes according as the district is nearer the one point or the other. In the mountain districts also these same seasons occur ; but in addition there are frequent showers, and in parts thunderstorms also, all through what in the adjacent plains would be the dry season. The climate of the high upland region between Kenia and Kilimanjaro I am not acquainted with ; but it ought to be comfortably cool, and the district 10 146 The Climate and Diseases well watered, judging from the corresponding district further south, where the elevation is not nearly so great. The climatic diseases that Europeans going to Central Africa must be prepared to meet are chiefly sunstroke, malarial fever, dysentery, and typhoid. But the severe form of malarial fever is, except in isolated spots, confined chiefly to the coast-swamp and the first plateau— the one absent, and the other not extensive in the British region ; whilst dysentery is, I believe, caused entirely, and typhoid chiefly, by drinking impure water, which with proper care need never be done. Under the name 'malarial fever' are " usually described (1) fevers caused by the poisonous atmo- sphere of swamp regions ; (2) those caused by drinking impure water which rises in and passes through such regions ; (3) those caused by exposure to the sun ; and, lastly (4), typhoid fever. The severe form of malarial fever, due to contamination of the air, is confined chiefly to the two regions described above ; but also exists where there are marshes or low-lying swampy districts even as high as the central plateau. Dr. Felkin gives four thousand feet as the height above which malarial fever is not found. This, though in the main correct, is mis- Impure Water 147 leading. The severe form even is found above that elevation in low-lying districts, especially in hollows amongst the hills, as where a comparatively large valley has a very small, not steep, outlet. Such basins as these are imitated on a small scale amongst, for instance, the mountains in the lake region of England ; and travellers who have left the beaten tracks and clambered over the hills find the same grassy swampy hollows amongst the slopes. The comparatively severe cold of the higher regions will, even where there is no malaria, bring out any fever latent in the system, just as an English winter will do in one lately returned from Africa ; so that a visit to a hill-sanatorium is some- times disappointing to an invalid who hopes for a speedy, as well as thorough, recovery. Drinking unboiled water, however clear-looking, is a very dangerous proceeding. Even in the healthy upland districts such an indulgence is apt to cause, amongst other disasters, the severe form of malarial fever ; but whilst impure water is one of the sources of malarial fever, it is the chief, if not only, source of dysentery, and the chief source of typhoid. This is not to be wondered at, consider- ing the unsanitary habits of the natives, who turn all their streams into sewers. The traveller has 10 — 2 148 The Climate and Diseases only to walk a short distance along a path by the side of any stream to see at a glance the cause of the streams being fouled. Even the cleanest-look- ing, fastest-running streams are somewhat dangerous on this account, and the smaller or semi-stagnant ones highly so. Before I went abroad, Commander Cameron, the African traveller, advised me to drink unboiled water from the running streams only ; but the difficulty in following out such advice as this lies in the fact that a traveller does not go to the stream to fetch his own water — his boy goes for him ; and unfortunately an African boy's idea of a running stream is a stream that runs sometimes. I would therefore unhesitatingly advise that a man should never drink unboiled water in East Africa, except where he has a spring in or close to his own garden. If he follows out this precaution, and does not sleep in swampy districts, nor expose himself unprotected to the sun, he will, in all probability, never have a severe attack of fever ; he will certainly not get "dysentery or sunstroke, and he will almost certainly not get typhoid. In fact, East Africa, except in parts, is not dangerous to the traveller who will let the habit of taking precautions become a second nature to him. Taking precautions may be a trouble at first, but in time it will cease to be Diseases of Natives 149 so, and the traveller or resident will be no more conscious of trouble when taking precautions than he is when taking the necessary steps to wash and dress himself each day. The streams are always in their most dangerous state at the beginning of the rainy season, when the showers first moisten the refuse lying about, and thus cause its decomposition, and then wash the decomposing materials into the nearest stream. At this time dysentery, typhoid, and diarrhoea are very prevalent amongst the natives, and frequently attack the white man who is imprudent enough to drink the water direct from the streams. Natives are not constitutionally exempt from many, if indeed from any, of the diseases from which Europeans suffer ; but being uncivilized, they escape many of the ills which civilization brings in its train, whilst they also fail to profit by the pro- tection against other evils which civilization provides. There is no wine or ardent liquor, and little fer- mented drink in the interior, consequently there are none of the many ills that result from over-indul- ge nee in these beverages. There is, of course, no painter's colic or knife-grinder's phthisis. There are, it is true, no boots to cause corns on the upper surface of the feet ; but the rough, rocky paths 150 The Climate and Diseases frequently cause corns, fissures, and ulcers on the soles of the feet, very painful and very intractable. Natives do not suffer from sewer-gas poisoning, but they suffer to an enormous extent from permitting the same refuse to poison their streams. There is no short-sight amongst them ; but dirt, and the glare of the sun and the dust-laden winds, cause frequent ophthalmia, which being neglected pro- duces the various degrees of blindness so prevalent in these regions. Though they have not yet learnt what nervous attacks, as we call them, mean, they are not free from St. Vitus' dance, epilepsy, and madness ; whilst stammering is about as -common a complaint as it is in England. I do not recollect having seen a case of spinal curvature, nor would one expect to find it amongst people who are un- clothed and wander about much in the open air. Hare-lip and cleft-palate has its victims in Africa as much as in England. Leprosy (anaesthetic and tubercular) is not un- common amongst the races of the interior ; and as there are practically no streams (except near the coast) in East Equatorial Africa, it is hard to see how in these districts it can be produced by fish-eating, as a very eminent authority believes is usually the case. The only fish ever seen in these regions is Leprosy 151 dried shark, carried up into the interior, as every- thing else is, on men's heads, and therefore an expensive article of diet, used only as a relish, and even as that, its use confined to the porters who come up in the caravans, whilst leprosy is found amongst the residents in the interior who have never been to the coast. Small-pox is endemic in Africa, and most caravans have a case amongst them. The natives are well aware of the infectious nature of the disease, and frequently burn down the temporary huts left by each passing caravan in order to destroy any pos- sible contagion of this virulent and dreaded disease. Some of the tribes practise inoculation amongst themselves, and are eager to be vaccinated when they have the opportunity, frequently coming long distances to a mission station for that purpose. Although small-pox is endemic, perhaps because it is so, the natives do not suffer so severely from the attacks as white people do. A severe form of the disease, in which the eruption is of the character known as ' confluent,' and which is very fatal in Europe, is usually recovered from by them ; and frequently they never even feel ill enough to stay on their beds even for one day during the attack. 152 The Climate and Diseases From the accurate descriptions by Ashe and Mackay, it is evident that the plague does rage in Uganda, notwithstanding what authorities state to the contrary ; but I have never come across the disease in the more southerly regions. I have never, either, succeeded in recognising measles or scarlatina, though I am not at all sure that they are not to be seen. Isolated cases of what is apparently a not very rapid form of cholera I have come across; the disease causing death, when it does cause it, in from two to three days. Epidemics of cholera I have never seen or ever heard of as occurring in the interior. In fact, the epidemics that 1 have seen have always been of a mixed type of disease, and in almost every case easily traceable to bad drinking water; a small collection of people being all, perhaps, taken ill on the same day, some with malarial fever, some with dysentery, some with typhoid, some with dengue, and some with diseases to which I could put no name. Certainly life in Central Africa inclines one to the belief that filth does cause so-called specific diseases to be generated de novo, and that hybrid diseases are far from un- common ; but to satisfy oneself on such a point as this, would require a far longer stay in the interior, and far more extended experience than I have had. Specificity T53 I would strongly advise anyone interested in the study of disease, and intending to travel in Central Africa, to read, first of all, a small monograph by Dr. Collins on the above question.* Umbilical hernia is extremely common in children; but rare in men, evidently disappearing as they grow older. This tendency is increased by the children's diet, which consists of large quantities of grain food, and some vegetables, with little, if any meat ; a diet which produces a degree of distension of the abdomen very strange to the European eye. The same grain-eating habits in the adult produce the smooth ground-down surface on the back teeth, so noticeable in our country among the labouring classes, and in the jaws of skulls of ancient Britons which are occasionally dug up. The bot-fly (CEstrus) is an occasional source of annoyance. It lays its egg under the skin of human beings, as well as of animals, and the egg becomes in due course a maggot ; the swelling resulting from the growth of the creature producing the most intense itching, which is only relieved by the escape of the maggot, either through an opening which occurs by ulceration, or through an artificial one made by the lancet. * 'Specificity and Evolution in Disease,' by W. J. Collins, M.D. London : H. K. Lewis, Gower Street. 154 The Climate and Diseases The wood-tick (Ixodes) is a much more fre- quent nuisance. It hangs in thousands upon the grass stalks along every path, and from these transfers itself to passing men and animals. Once attached, it fixes itself on by means of its forceps, and commences to suck the blood of its victim, gradually distending until the little tick which, originally, was the size and shape of a bug, soon becomes the size and shape of a gooseberry, with two depressions left to indicate where the eyes were, and a row of little pits, at the bottom of which are the legs ; a hideous, repulsive bag of blood, which bursts on very slight provocation. Even the flea, harmless enough in England, becomes a source of the most extreme discomfort when it swarms in countless millions, as it does in some badly-kept huts. The only way to get rid of it is to turn out the whole place ; sweep the floors and sprinkle them with kerosine, and clean and sprinkle every article before returning it to its place. After two or three repetitions of this treatment, the plague ceases, not to return in a well-kept hut. Lung affections are very common amongst the natives. The sudden changes of temperature in the rainy season, with no corresponding change in garments, naturally induces these conditions. A Dangerous Food 155 native will easily succumb to an attack once induced, as the causes which induced it will also increase it. Lung affections, secondary to malarial fever, are a very fruitful source of death to natives suffering from what would otherwise be a by no means serious attack of the fever. The same con- ditions which incite lung complaints, also tend to the prevalence of rheumatism ; which, however, is rarely very acute. Heart-disease and dropsy are not uncommon. Worms are a very frequent source of trouble to children ; and so are their sequelae met with in England. The native method of grinding corn, between two soft stones, naturally produces a mixture of meal and stone dust, and the porridge made from this is often eaten by Europeans as well as natives. It never seems to injure the native when healthy, and frequently does not injure the healthy European ; but when suffering from dysentery or typhoid, this food is distinctly harmful, even for the native, and to my knowledge has often caused death. I believe it is unwise for a European to eat food made from native meal, whilst he is travelling during his first year in the tropics ; after that period he will be able to judge for himself. Hut if he has once suffered 156 The Climate and Diseases from dysentery or typhoid, it certainly is his safest course to refrain ever after from the use of such food. At the coast, the method of grinding corn being different, the same rule does not hold good ; but then at the coast American flour is plentiful, and cheap, and so the European is not tempted there to make shift with native meal. I do not recollect having seen goitre in the interior ; but at the coast mild cases of the disease are of not infrequent occurrence. The soil of the coast, in those parts, at least, with which I am familiar, is composed of fossiliferous limestone, and the water of the surface wells and streams is naturally impregnated with the salts of lime, and with the other salts which are associated with lime. It was always a surprise to me how babies in Africa could stand the treatment to which they were subjected. They are fed from birth upwards upon gruel in addition to their natural food. On theo- retical grounds the majority of them should die from gastric irritation ; but such does not appear to be the case, and most survive this utter neglect of the rules of physiology and dietetics. At the same time, it is very difficult to ascertain what is the death-rate amongst very young children ; their deaths being a matter of such complete unimportance, that the Albinism and Melanism 157 European would never hear of it, even if half their number were swept off by an epidemic. I was very seldom called in to see sick babies, until the natives began to understand that I would come willingly to see them, and take trouble about their infantile dis- orders. There are two strange conditions, one can hardly call them diseases — albinism and melanism. Con- genital abnormalities they are, strictly speaking. Albinism consists in the entire absence of pigment from the skin and appendages, so that the eyes destitute of pigment in front have a pinkish appear- ance, due to the blood vessels at the back of the eye showing through ; the skin from the same cause has a delicate pink hue ; the parts of the body usually pigmented are not so, and the hair is perfectly white. This condition, familiar to us in England amongst men, usually in the person of some friend or ac- quaintance, is also well-known to us amongst animals in the shape of white rats ; and if we frequent museums, in the shape of white starlings, white bullfinches, and white sparrows. Strange to say, it occurs amongst the Africans ; so that we have the almost repulsive sight of a man with pure negro features, white woolly hair, and a perfectly white skin, the albino negro, the gazing stock and jest of 158 The Climate and Diseases the negro world. In melanism, just the opposite condition holds. Black sheep are familiar to all dwellers in the country ; black rabbits, squirrels, and leopards to frequenters of museums ; but melanism apparently never occurs amongst man, so that the albino negro has no corresponding abnormal brother amongst the white races. The absence of cold in Central Africa makes an enormous difference in the sufferings amongst the poor there and in England. After working amongst the poor in England, and living amongst the scenes of slavery in Central Africa, I certainly feel that the misery and pain suffered by the natives of Africa is not to be compared with the misery, pain, and sorrow that exist amongst the very poor in all our great cities, especially during the winter months. CHAPTER VI THE TRAVELLER Very few are the favoured individuals who arrive in East Africa with a clear idea of what they are likely to encounter, or provided with half of the necessaries of comfortable, if even of actual existence. It is very difficult for a man who has always lived in a civilized country to realize what his condition will be like when he has no shops within one or two months' journey, or to remember every item which he ought to lay in for an absence of perhaps one or two years. Mr. Ashe, in his deeply-interesting book ' Two Kings of Uganda,' says : ' I may mention some of the mistakes which were made : we were provided with Epsom salts by the stone, but found ourselves short of common table-salt. Our large supply of castor-oil was but a poor compensation for the entire absence of such a necessity as butter, and for my part I would gladly have exchanged our 1 60 The Traveller elaborate distilling apparatus for another common teakettle.' Briefly, the traveller who proposes to penetrate into the interior of Central Africa must be prepared to live without the certainty of fresh supplies, except meat, for the whole time he may be absent ; for though the probability is that he will be able to purchase other food, it is possible that he may not be able to do so for days or even weeks together. His luggage must be made up into loads of such a size and weight as to be easily carried by his porters on their heads or shoulders. He must be prepared to walk the whole way himself, reserving his hammock for his carriage during sickness ; and he and his men must also be well armed, for the better armed he is, the less likelihood there is of his arms being needed. Lastly, he must have a very large supply of both patience and firmness if his journey is to be really successful. Until quite lately it was at Zanzibar that all travellers made ready their caravans ; but the es- tablishment of the Imperial British East Africa Company at Mombasa has made that port an im- portant base from which caravans are sent into the interior. Zanzibar has quite an imposing effect viewed from The Sultans Palace 161 a steamer. The white solid-looking houses stand out well in relief against the sea in front and the green palm-trees behind. Approaching nearer you see that one long street fronts the sea, behind which are some of the principal houses— the French Hotel to the north, and the British Consulate and Agency to the south. In the middle is a large square, at the back of which is the Sultan's old palace ; and at the time I first visited it (1886) his only one. It looks not unlike a large doll's house, and is orna- mented with semicircular windows with alternate panes of bright blue and bright green. To the north of the palace are the Sultan's ironworks, and between these two places some waste ground, on which lie in wild profusion portions of cannon, boilers, steam -trams, engines, and other rusting remains, behind which rises a plastered building with green window- shutters in various stages of degeneration, in keeping with the crumbling, eaten surface of the once white -plastered walls. This factory - like structure is the town - house of the Sultan's harem. The greater part of the remainder of the town is composed of far inferior houses to the rather massive-looking structures which front the sea. The streets are so narrow that in many places you can touch both side-walls at once. They ir 1 62 The Traveller are gutters as well as streets, as it is the custom in Zanzibar to throw your refuse out of your windows ; whilst beneath each window there is a hole in the stone floor of the room which leads out into the street, and down which is poured your dirty water. A careful servant would look to see if there were passers-by before commencing to do this ; but Zan- zibar servants are not all careful. Two days after my arrival at Zanzibar the great fast of Ramadan was over, and all the natives appeared in clean garments. The native costume consists of a white garment exactly like an em- broidered nightshirt. And very nice and neat it looks when clean. The Sultan held a reception in honour of the day ; and in the morning, quite early, received the English residents. We assembled at Sir John Kirk's house, and then marched in procession to the new palace, which was not quite finished. As we entered, the band, composed of Egyptians, played ' God save the Queen.' Then we marched upstairs, and were received at the top by his Highness, who gave a hearty shake of the hands to each, after which we went into the reception-room — a long room with white-plastered walls and a blue dado. The floor was covered with a thick warm carpet with a flaring pattern. Between the windows, on ; doEr P- l » . ^6 IF-! .,cr < z - A Long List 16