05 - Chapter 4
CHAPTER IV.
Geology and description of the Waiyau land. Leaves Mataka’s. The Nyumbo plant. Native iron-foundry. Blacksmiths. Makes for the Lake Nyassa. Delight at seeing the Lake once more. The Manganja or Nyassa tribe. Arab slave crossing. Unable to procure passage across. The Kungu fly. Fear of the English amongst slavers. Lake shore. Blue ink. Chitané changes colour. The Nsaka fish.
Makalaosé drinks beer. The Sanjika fish. London antiquities.
Lake rivers. Mukaté’s. Lake Pamalombé. Mponda’s. A slave gang.
Wikatani discovers his relatives and remains.
_28th July, 1866._--We proposed to start to-day, but Mataka said that he was not ready yet: the flour had to be ground, and he had given us no meat. He had sent plenty of cooked food almost every day. He asked if we would slaughter the ox he would give here, or take it on; we preferred to kill it at once. He came on the 28th with a good lot of flour for us, and men to guide us to Nyassa, telling us that this was Moembé, and his district extended all the way to the Lake: he would not send us to Loséwa, as that place had lately been plundered and burned. In general the chiefs have shown an anxiety to promote our safety. The country is a mass of mountains. On leaving Mataka’s we ascended considerably, and about the end of the first day’s march, near Magola’s village, the barometer showed our greatest altitude, about 3400 feet above the sea. There were villages of these mountaineers everywhere, for the most part of 100 houses or more each. The springs were made the most use of that they knew; the damp spots drained, and the water given a free channel for use in irrigation further down: most of these springs showed the presence of iron by the oxide oozing out. A great many patches of peas are seen in full bearing and flower. The trees are small, except in the hollows: there is plenty of grass and flowers near streams and on the heights. The mountain-tops may rise 2000 or 3000 feet above their flanks, along which we wind, going perpetually up and down the steep ridges of which the country is but a succession.
Looking at the geology of the district, the plateaux on each side of the Rovuma are masses of grey sandstone, capped with masses of ferruginous conglomerate; apparently an aqueous deposit. When we ascend the Rovuma about sixty miles, a great many pieces and blocks of silicified wood appear on the surface of the soil at the bottom of the slope up the plateaux. This in Africa is a sure indication of the presence of coal beneath, but it was not observed cropping out; the plateaux are cut up in various directions by wadys well supplied with grass and trees on deep and somewhat sandy soil: but at the confluence of the Loendi highlands they appear in the far distance. In the sands of the Loendi pieces of coal are quite common.[16]
Before reaching the confluence of the Rovuma and Loendi, or say about ninety miles from the sea, the plateau is succeeded by a more level country, having detached granitic masses shooting up some 500 or 700 feet. The sandstone of the plateau has at first been hardened, then quite metamorphosed into a chocolate-coloured schist. As at Chilolé hill, we have igneous rocks, apparently trap, capped with masses of beautiful white dolomite. We still ascend in altitude as we go westwards, and come upon long tracts of gneiss with hornblende. The gneiss is often striated, all the striae looking one way--sometimes north and south, and at other times east and west. These rocks look as if a stratified rock had been nearly melted, and the strata fused together by the heat. From these striated rocks have shot up great rounded masses of granite or syenite, whose smooth sides and crowns contain scarcely any trees, and are probably from 3000 to 4000 feet above the sea. The elevated plains among these mountain masses show great patches of ferruginous conglomerate, which, when broken, look like yellow haematite with madrepore holes in it: this has made the soil of a red colour. On the watershed we have still the rounded granitic hills jutting above the plains (if such they may be called) which are all ups and downs, and furrowed with innumerable running rills, the sources of the Rovuma and Loendi. The highest rock observed with mica schist was at an altitude of 3440 feet. The same uneven country prevails as we proceed from the watershed about forty miles down to the Lake, and a great deal of quartz in small fragments renders travelling-very difficult. Near the Lake, and along its eastern shore, we have mica schist and gneiss foliated, with a great deal of hornblende; but the most remarkable feature of it is that the rocks are all tilted on edge, or slightly inclined to the Lake. The active agent in effecting this is not visible. It looks as if a sudden rent had been made, so as to form the Lake, and tilt all these rocks nearly over. On the east side of the lower part of the Lake we have two ranges of mountains, evidently granitic: the nearer one covered with small trees and lower than the other; the other jagged and bare, or of the granitic forms. But in all this country no fossil-yielding rock was visible except the grey sandstone referred to at the beginning of this note. The rocks are chiefly the old crystalline forms.
One fine straight tall tree in the hollows seemed a species of fig: its fruit was just forming, but it was too high for me to ascertain its species. The natives don’t eat the fruit, but they eat the large grubs which come out of it. The leaves were fifteen inches long by five broad: they call it Unguengo.
_29th July, 1866._--At Magola’s village. Although we are now rid of the sepoys, we cannot yet congratulate ourselves on being rid of the lazy habits of lying down in the path which they introduced. A strong scud comes up from the south bringing much moisture with it: it blows so hard above, this may be a storm on the coast. Temperature in mornings 55°.
_30th July, 1866._--A short march brought us to Pezimba’s village, which consists of 200 houses and huts. It is placed very nicely on a knoll between two burns, which, as usual, are made use of for irrigating peas in winter time. The headman said that if we left now we had a good piece of jungle before us, and would sleep twice in it before reaching Mbanga. We therefore remained. An Arab party, hearing of our approach, took a circuitous route among the mountains to avoid coming in contact with us. In travelling to Pezimba’s we had commenced our western descent to the Lake, for we were now lower than Magola’s by 300 feet. We crossed many rivulets and the Lochesi, a good-sized stream. The watershed parts some streams for Loendi and some for Rovuma. There is now a decided scantiness of trees. Many of the hill-tops are covered with grass or another plant; there is pleasure now in seeing them bare. Ferns, rhododendrons, and a foliaged tree, which looks in the distance like silver-fir, are met with. The Mandaré root is here called Nyumbo, when cooked it has a slight degree of bitterness with it which cultivation may remove. Mica schist crowned some of the heights on the watershed, then gneiss, and now, as we descend further, we have igneous rocks of more recent eruption, porphyry and gneiss, with hornblende. A good deal of ferruginous conglomerate, with holes in it, covers many spots; when broken, it looks like yellow haematite, with black linings to the holes: this is probably the ore used in former times by the smiths, of whose existence we now find still more evidence than further east.
_31st July, 1866._--I had presented Pezimba with a cloth, so he cooked for us handsomely last night, and this morning desired us to wait a little as he had not yet sufficient meal made to present: we waited and got a generous present.
It was decidedly milder here than at Mataka’s, and we had a clear sky. In our morning’s march we passed the last of the population, and went on through a fine well-watered fruitful country, to sleep near a mountain called Mtéwiré, by a stream called Msapo. A very large Arab slave-party was close by our encampment, and I wished to speak to them; but as soon as they knew of our being near they set off in a pathless course across country, and were six days in the wilderness.[17]
_1st August, 1866._--We saw the encampment of another Arab party. It consisted of ten pens, each of which, from the number of fires it contained, may have held from eighty to a hundred slaves. The people of the country magnified the numbers, saying that they would reach from this to Mataka’s; but from all I can learn, I think that from 300 to 800 slaves is the commoner gang. This second party went across country very early this morning. We saw the fire-sticks which the slaves had borne with them. The fear they feel is altogether the effect of the English name, for we have done nothing to cause their alarm.
_2nd August, 1866._--There was something very cheering to me in the sight at our encampment of yellow grass and trees dotted over it, as in the Bechuana country. The birds were singing merrily too, inspired by the cold, which was 47°, and by the vicinity of some population. Gum-copal trees and bushes grow here as well as all over the country; but gum is never dug for, probably because the trees were never large enough to yield the fossil gum. Marks of smiths are very abundant and some furnaces are still standing. Much cultivation must formerly have been where now all is jungle.
We arrived at Mbanga, a village embowered in trees, chiefly of the euphorbia, so common in the Manganja country further south. Kandulo, the headman, had gone to drink beer at another village, but sent orders to give a hut and to cook for us. We remained next day. Took lunars.
We had now passed through, at the narrowest part, the hundred miles of depopulated country, of which about seventy are on the N.E. of Mataka. The native accounts differ as to the cause. Some say slave wars, and assert that the Makoa from the vicinity of Mozambique played an important part in them; others say famine; others that the people have moved to and beyond Nyassa.[18] Certain it is, from the potsherds strewed over the country, and the still remaining ridges on which beans, sorghum, maize, and cassava, were planted, that the departed population was prodigious. The Waiyau, who are now in the country, came from the other side of the Rovuma, and they probably supplanted the Manganja, an operation which we see going on at the present day.
_4th August, 1866._--An hour and a half brought us to Miulé, a village on the same level with Mbanga; and the chief pressing us to stay, on the plea of our sleeping two nights in the jungle, instead of one if we left early next morning, we consented. I asked him what had become of the very large iron-smelting population of this region; he said many had died of famine, others had fled to the west of Nyassa: the famine is the usual effect of slave wars, and much death is thereby caused--probably much more than by the journey to the coast. He had never heard any tradition of stone hatchets having been used, nor of stone spear-heads or arrowheads of that material, nor had he heard of any being turned up by the women in hoeing. The Makondé, as we saw, use wooden spears where iron is scarce. I saw wooden hoes used for tilling the soil in the Bechuana and Bataka countries, but never stone ones. In 1841 I saw a Bushwoman in the Cape Colony with a round stone and a hole through it; on being asked she showed me how it was used by inserting the top of a digging-stick into it, and digging a root. The stone was to give the stick weight.
[Illustration.] The stones still used as anvils and sledge-hammers by many of the African smiths, when considered from their point of view, show sounder sense than if they were burdened with the great weights we use. They are unacquainted with the process of case-hardening, which, applied to certain parts of our anvils, gives them their usefulness, and an anvil of their soft iron would not do so well as a hard stone. It is true a small light one might be made, but let any one see how the hammers of their iron bevel over and round in the faces with a little work, and he will perceive that only a wild freak would induce any sensible native smith to make a mass equal to a sledge-hammer, and burden himself with a weight for what can be better performed by a stone. If people are settled, as on the coast, then they gladly use any mass of cast iron they may find, but never where, as in the interior, they have no certainty of remaining any length of time in one spot.
_5th August, 1866._--We left Miulé, and commenced our march towards Lake Nyassa, and slept at the last of the streams that flow to the Loendi. In Mataka’s vicinity, N.E., there is a perfect brush of streams flowing to that river: one forms a lake in its course, and the sources of the Rovuma lie in the same region. After leaving Mataka’s we crossed a good-sized one flowing to Loendi, and, the day after leaving Pezimba’s, another going to the Chiringa or Lochiringa, which is a tributary of the Rovuma.
_6th August, 1866._--We passed two cairns this morning at the beginning of the very sensible descent to the Lake. They are very common in all this Southern Africa in the passes of the mountains, and are meant to mark divisions of countries, perhaps burial-places, but the Waiyau who accompanied us thought that they were merely heaps of stone collected by some one making a garden. The cairns were placed just about the spot where the blue waters of Nyassa first came fairly into view.
We now came upon a stream, the Misinjé, flowing into the Lake, and we crossed it five times; it was about twenty yards wide, and thigh deep. We made but short stages when we got on the lower plateau, for the people had great abundance of food, and gave large presents of it if we rested. One man gave four fowls, three large baskets of maize, pumpkins, eland’s fat--a fine male, as seen by his horns,--and pressed us to stay, that he might see our curiosities as well as others. He said that at one day’s distance south of him all sorts of animals, as buffaloes, elands, elephants, hippopotami, and antelopes, could be shot.
_8th August, 1866._--We came to the Lake at the confluence of the Misinjé, and felt grateful to That Hand which had protected us thus far on our journey. It was as if I had come back to an old home I never expected again to see; and pleasant to bathe in the delicious waters again, hear the roar of the sea, and dash in the rollers. Temp. 71° at 8 A.M., while the air was 65°. I feel quite exhilarated. The headman here, Mokalaosé, is a real Manganja, and he and all his people exhibit the greater darkness of colour consequent on being in a warm moist climate; he is very friendly, and presented millet, porridge, cassava, and hippopotamus meat boiled and asked if I liked milk, as he had some of Mataka’s cattle here. His people bring sanjika the best Lake fish, for sale; they are dried on stages over slow fires, and lose their fine flavour by it, but they are much prized inland. I bought fifty for a fathom of calico; when fresh, they taste exactly like the best herrings, _i.e._ as we think, but voyagers’ and travellers’ appetites are often so whetted as to be incapable of giving a true verdict in matters of taste.
[It is necessary to explain that Livingstone knew of an Arab settlement on the western shore of the Lake, and that he hoped to induce the chief man Jumbé to give him a passage to the other side.]
_10th August, 1866._--I sent Seyed Majid’s letter up to Jumbé, but the messenger met some coast Arabs at the Loangwa, which may be seven miles from this, and they came back with him, haggling a deal about the fare, and then went off, saying that they would bring the dhow here for us. Finding that they did not come, I sent Musa, who brought back word that they had taken the dhow away over to Jumbé at Kotakota, or, as they pronounce it, Ngotagota. Very few of the coast Arabs can read; in words they are very polite, but truthfulness seems very little regarded. I am resting myself and people--working up journal, lunars, and altitudes--but will either move south or go to the Arabs towards the north soon.
Mokalaosé’s fears of the Waiyau will make him welcome Jumbé here, and then the Arab will some day have an opportunity of scattering his people as he has done those at Kotakota. He has made Loséwa too hot for himself. When the people there were carried off by Mataka’s people, Jumbé seized their stores of grain, and now has no post to which he can go there. The Loangwa Arabs give an awful account of Jumbé’s murders and selling the people, but one cannot take it all in; at the mildest it must have been bad. This is all they ever do; they cannot form a state or independent kingdom: slavery and the slave-trade are insuperable obstacles to any permanence inland; slaves can escape so easily, all therefore that the Arabs do is to collect as much money as they can by hook and by crook, and then leave the country.
We notice a bird called namtambwé, which sings very nicely with a strong voice after dark here at the Misinjé confluence.
_11th August, 1866._--Two headmen came down country from villages where we slept, bringing us food, and asking how we are treated; they advise our going south to Mukaté’s, where the Lake is narrow.
_12th-14th August, 1866._--Map making; but my energies were sorely taxed by the lazy sepoys, and I was usually quite tired out at night. Some men have come down from Mataka’s, and report the arrival of an Englishman with cattle for me, "he has two eyes behind as well as two in front:" this is enough of news for awhile!
Mokalaosé has his little afflictions, and he tells me of them. A wife ran away, I asked how many he had; he told me twenty in all: I then thought he had nineteen too many. He answered with the usual reason, "But who would cook for strangers if I had but one?"
We saw clouds of "kungu" gnats on the Lake; they are not eaten here. An ungenerous traveller coming here with my statement in his hand, and finding the people denying all knowledge of how to catch and cook them, might say that I had been romancing in saying I had seen them made into cakes in the northern part of the Lake; when asking here about them, a stranger said, "They know how to use them in the north; we do not."
Mokalaosé thinks that the Arabs are afraid that I may take their dhows from them and go up to the north. He and the other headmen think that the best way will be to go to Mukaté’s in the south. All the Arabs flee from me, the English name being in their minds inseparably connected with recapturing slavers: they cannot conceive that I have any other object in view; they cannot read Seyed Majid’s letter.
_21st August, 1866._--Started for the Loangwa, on the east side of the Lake; hilly all the way, about seven miles. This river may be twenty yards wide near its confluence; the Misinjé is double that: each has accumulated a promontory of deposit and enters the Lake near its apex. We got a house from a Waiyau man on a bank about forty feet above the level of Nyassa, but I could not sleep for the manoeuvres of a crowd of the minute ants which infested it. They chirrup distinctly; they would not allow the men to sleep either, though all were pretty tired by the rough road up.
_22nd August, 1866._--We removed to the south side of the Loangwa, where there are none of these little pests.
_23rd August, 1866._--Proposed to the Waiyau headman to send a canoe over to call Jumbé, as I did not believe in the assertions of the half-caste Arab here that he had sent for his. All the Waiyau had helped me, and why not he? He was pleased with this, but advised waiting till a man sent to Loséwa should return.
_24th August, 1866._--A leopard took a dog out of a house next to ours; he had bitten a man before, but not mortally.
_29th August, 1866._--News come that the two dhows have come over to Loséwa (Loséfa). The Mazitu had chased Jumbé up the hills: had they said, on to an island, I might have believed them.
_30th August,1866._--The fear which the English have inspired in the Arab slave-traders is rather inconvenient. All flee from me as if I had the plague, and I cannot in consequence transmit letters to the coast, or get across the Lake. They seem to think that if I get into a dhow I will be sure to burn it. As the two dhows on the Lake are used for nothing else but the slave-trade, their owners have no hope of my allowing them to escape, so after we have listened to various lies as xcuses, we resolve to go southwards, and cross at the point of departure of the Shiré from the Lake. I took lunars several times on both sides of the moon, and have written a despatch for Lord Clarendon, besides a number of private letters.
_3rd September, 1866._--Went down to confluence of the Misinjé and came to many of the eatable insect "kungu,"--they are caught by a quick motion of the hand holding a basket. We got a cake of these same insects further down; they make a buzz like a swarm of bees, and are probably the perfect state of some Lake insect.
I observed two beaches of the Lake: one about fifteen feet above the present high-water mark, and the other about forty above that; but between the two the process of disintegration, which results from the sudden cold and heat in these regions, has gone on so much that seldom is a well-rounded smoothed one seen; the lower beach is very well marked. The strike of large masses of foliated gneiss is parallel with the major axis of the Lake, and all are tilted on edge. Some are a little inclined to the Lake, as if dipping to it westwards, but others are as much inclined the opposite way, or twisted.
I made very good blue ink from the juice of a berry, the fruit of a creeper, which is the colour of port wine when expressed. A little ferri carb. ammon., added to this is all that is required. The poodle dog Chitané is rapidly changing the colour of its hair. All the parts corresponding to the ribs and neck are rapidly becoming red; the majority of country dogs are of this colour. The Manganja, or Wa-nyassa, are an aboriginal race; they have great masses of hair, and but little, if any, of the prognathous in the profile. Their bodies and limbs are very well made, and the countenance of the men is often very pleasant. The women are very plain and lumpy, but exceedingly industrious in their gardens from early morning till about 11 A.M., then from 3 P.M. till dark, or pounding corn and grinding it: the men make twine or nets by day, and are at their fisheries in the evenings and nights. They build the huts, the women plaster them. A black fish, the Nsaka, makes a hole, with raised edges, which, with the depth from which they are taken, is from fifteen to eighteen inches, and from two to three feet broad. It is called by the natives their house. The pair live in it for some time, or until the female becomes large for spawning; this operation over, the house is left.
I gave Mokalaosé some pumpkin seed and peas. He took me into his house, and presented a quantity of beer. I drank a little, and seeing me desist from taking more, he asked if I wished a servant-girl to "_pata mimba_." Not knowing what was meant, I offered the girl the calabash of beer, and told her to drink, but this was not the intention. He asked if I did not wish more; and then took the vessel, and as he drank the girl performed the operation on himself. Placing herself in front, she put both hands round his waist below the short ribs, and pressing gradually drew them round to his belly in front. He took several prolonged draughts, and at each she repeated the operation, as if to make the liquor go equally over the stomach. Our topers don’t seem to have discovered the need for this.
_5th September, 1866._--Our march is along the shore to Ngombo promontory, which approaches so near to Senga or Tsenga opposite, as to narrow the Lake to some sixteen or eighteen miles. It is a low sandy point, the edge fringed on the north-west and part of the south with a belt of papyrus and reeds; the central parts wooded. Part of the south side has high sandy dunes, blown up by the south wind, which strikes it at right angles there. One was blowing as we marched along the southern side eastwards, and was very tiresome. We reached Panthunda’s village by a brook called Lilolé. Another we crossed before coming to it is named Libesa: these brooks form the favourite spawning grounds of the sanjika and mpasa, two of the best fishes of the Lake. The sanjika is very like our herring in shape and taste and size; the mpasa larger every way: both live on green herbage formed at the bottom of the Lake and rivers.
_7th September, 1866._--Chirumba’s village being on the south side of a long lagoon, we preferred sleeping on the mainland, though they offered their cranky canoes to ferry us over. This lagoon is called Pansangwa.
_8th September, 1866._--In coming along the southern side of Ngombo promontory we look eastwards, but when we leave it we turn southwards, having a double range of lofty mountains on our left. These are granitic in form, the nearer range being generally the lowest, and covered with scraggy trees; the second, or more easterly, is some 6000 feet above the sea, bare and rugged, with jagged peaks shooting high into the air. This is probably the newest range. The oldest people have felt no earthquake, but some say that they have heard of such things from their elders.
We passed very many sites of old villages, which are easily known by the tree euphorbia planted round an umbelliferous one, and the sacred fig. One species here throws out strong buttresses in the manner of some mangroves instead of sending down twiners which take root, as is usually the ease with the tropical fig. These, with millstones--stones for holding the pots in cooking--and upraised clay benches, which have been turned into brick by fire in the destruction of the huts, show what were once the "pleasant haunts of men." No stone implements ever appear. If they existed they could not escape notice, since the eyes in walking are almost always directed to the ground to avoid stumbling on stones or stumps. In some parts of the world stone implements are so common they seem to have been often made and discarded as soon as formed, possibly by getting better tools; if, indeed, the manufacture is not as modern as that found by Mr. Waller. Passing some navvies in the City who were digging for the foundation of a house, he observed a very antique-looking vase, wet from the clay, standing on the bank. He gave ten shillings for it, and subsequently, by the aid of a scrubbing brush and some water, detected the hieroglyphics "Copeland late Spode" on the bottom of it!
Here the destruction is quite recent, and has been brought about by some who entertained us very hospitably on the Misinjé, before we came to the confluence. The woman chief, Ulenjelenjé, or Njelenjé, bore a part in it for the supply of Arab caravans. It was the work of the Masininga, a Waiyau tribe, of which her people form a part. They almost depopulated the broad fertile tract, of some three or four miles, between the mountain range and the Lake, along which our course lay. It was wearisome to see the skulls and bones scattered about everywhere; one would fain not notice them, but they are so striking as one trudges along the sultry path, that it cannot be avoided.
_9th September, 1866._--We spent Sunday at Kandango’s village. The men killed a hippopotamus when it was sleeping on the shore; a full-grown female, 10 feet 9 inches from the snout to the insertion of the tail, and 4 feet 4 inches high at the withers. The bottom here and all along southwards now is muddy. Many of the _Siluris Glanis_ are caught equal in length to an eleven or a twelve-pound salmon, but a great portion is head; slowly roasted on a stick stuck in the ground before the fire they seemed to me much more savoury than I ever tasted them before. With the mud we have many shells: north of Ngombo scarcely one can be seen, and there it is sandy or rocky.
_10th September, 1866._--In marching southwards we came close to the range (the Lake lies immediately on the other side of it), but we could not note the bays which it forms; we crossed two mountain torrents from sixty to eighty yards broad, and now only ankle deep. In flood these bring down enormous trees, which are much battered and bruised among the rocks in their course; they spread over the plain, too, and would render travelling here in the rains impracticable. After spending the night at a very civil headman’s chefu, we crossed the Lotendé, another of these torrents: each very lofty mass in the range seemed to give rise to one. Nothing of interest occurred as we trudged along. A very poor headman, Pamawawa, presented a roll of salt instead of food: this was grateful to us, as we have been without that luxury some time.
_12th September, 1866._--We crossed the rivulet Nguena, and then went on to another with a large village by it, it is called Pantoza Pangone. The headman had been suffering from sore eyes for four months, and pressed me to stop and give him medicine, which I did.
_13th September, 1866._--We crossed a strong brook called Nkoré. My object in mentioning the brooks which were flowing at this time, and near the end of the dry season, is to give an idea of the sources of supply of evaporation. The men enumerate the following, north of the Misinjé. Those which are greater are marked thus +, and the lesser ones -.
1. Misinjé + has canoes.
2. Loangwa - 3. Leséfa -
4. Lelula - 5. Nchamanjé -
6. Musumba + 7. Fubwé +
8. Chia -
9. Kisanga +
10. Bweka - 11. Chifumero + has canoes.
12. Loangwa -
13. Mkoho - 14. Mangwelo - at N. end of Lake.
Including the above there are twenty or twenty-four perennial brooks and torrents which give a good supply of water in the dry season; in the wet season they are supplemented by a number of burns, which, though flowing now, have their mouths blocked up with bars of sand, and yield nothing except by percolation; the Lake rises at least four feet perpendicularly in the wet season, and has enough during the year from these perennial brooks to supply the Shiré’s continual flow.
[It will be remembered that the beautiful river Shiré carries off the waters of Lake Nyassa and joins the Zambesi near Mount Morambala, about ninety miles from the sea. It is by this water-way that Livingstone always hoped to find an easy access to Central Africa. The only obstacles that exist are, first, the foolish policy of the Portuguese with regard to Customs’ duties at the mouth of the Zambesi; and secondly, a succession of cataracts on the Shiré, which impede navigation for seventy miles. The first hindrance may give way under more liberal views than those which prevail at present at the Court of Lisbon, and then the remaining difficulty--accepted as a fact--will be solved by the establishment of a boat service both above and below the cataracts. Had Livingstone survived he would have been cheered by hearing that already several schemes are afoot to plant Missions in the vicinity of Lake Nyassa, and we may with confidence look to the revival of the very enterprise which he presently so bitterly deplores as a thing of the past, for Bishop Steere has fully determined to re-occupy the district in which fell his predecessor, Bishop Mackenzie, and others attached to the Universities Mission.] In the course of this day’s march we were pushed close to the Lake by Mount Gomé, and, being now within three miles of the end of the Lake, we could see the whole plainly. There we first saw the Shiré emerge, and there also we first gazed on the broad waters of Nyassa.
Many hopes have been disappointed here. Far down on the right bank of the Zambesi lies the dust of her whose death changed all my future prospects; and now, instead of a check being given to the slave-trade by lawful commerce on the Lake, slave-dhows prosper! An Arab slave-party fled on hearing of us yesterday. It is impossible not to regret the loss of good Bishop Mackenzie, who sleeps far down the Shiré, and with him all hope of the Gospel being introduced into Central Africa. The silly abandonment of all the advantages of the Shiré route by the Bishop’s successor I shall ever bitterly deplore, but all will come right some day, though I may not live to participate in the joy, or even see the commencement of better times. In the evening we reached the village of Cherekalongwa on the brook Pamchololo, and were very jovially received by the headman with beer. He says that Mukaté,[19] Kabinga, and Mponda alone supply the slave-traders now by raids on the Manganja, but they go S.W. to the Maravi, who, impoverished by a Mazitu raid, sell each other as well.
_14th, September, 1866._--At Cherekalongwa’s (who has a skin disease, believed by him to have been derived from eating fresh-water turtles), we were requested to remain one day in order that he might see us. He had heard much about us; had been down the Shiré, and as far as Mosambique, but never had an Englishman in his town before. As the heat is great we were glad of the rest and beer, with which he very freely supplied us.
I saw the skin of a Phenembe, a species of lizard which devours chickens; here it is named Salka. It had been flayed by a cut up the back--body, 12 inches; across belly, 10 inches.
After nearly giving up the search for Dr. Roscher’s point of reaching the Lake--because no one, either Arab or native, had the least idea of either Nusseewa or Makawa, the name given to the place--I discovered it in Lesséfa, the accentuated _é_ being sounded as our _e_ in _set_. This word would puzzle a German philologist, as being the origin of Nussewa, but the Waiyau pronounce it Loséwa, the Arabs Lusséwa, and Roscher’s servant transformed the _L_ and _é_ into _N_ and _ee_, hence Nusseewa. In confirmation of this rivulet Leséfa, which is opposite Kotakota, or, as the Arabs pronounce it, Nkotakota, the chief is Mangkaka (Makawa), or as there is a confusion of names as to chief it may be Mataka, whose town and district is called Moembé, the town Pamoembe = Mamemba.
I rest content with Kingomango so far verifying the place at which he arrived two months after we had discovered Lake Nyassa. He deserved all the credit due to finding the way thither, but he travelled as an Arab, and no one suspected him to be anything else. Our visits have been known far and wide, and great curiosity excited; but Dr. Roscher merits the praise only of preserving his _incognito_ at a distance from Kilwa: his is almost the only case known of successfully assuming the Arab guise--Burckhardt is the exception. When Mr. Palgrave came to Muscat, or a town in Oman where our political agent Col. Desborough was stationed, he was introduced to that functionary by an interpreter as Hajee Ali, &c. Col. Desborough replied, "You are no Hajee Ali, nor anything else but Gifford Palgrave, with whom I was schoolfellow at the Charter House." Col. Desborough said he knew him at once, from a peculiar way of holding his head, and Palgrave begged him not to disclose his real character to his interpreter, on whom, and some others, he had been imposing. I was told this by Mr. Dawes, a Lieutenant in the Indian navy, who accompanied Colonel Pelly in his visit to the Nejed, Riad, &c, and took observations for him.
_Tañgaré_ is the name of a rather handsome bean, which possesses intoxicating qualities. To extract these it is boiled, then peeled, and new water supplied: after a second and third boiling it is pounded, and the meal taken to the river and the water allowed to percolate through it several times. Twice cooking still leaves the intoxicating quality; but if eaten then it does not cause death: it is curious that the natives do not use it expressly to produce intoxication. When planted near a tree it grows all over it, and yields abundantly: the skin of the pod is velvety, like our broad beans.
Another bean, with a pretty white mark on it, grows freely, and is easily cooked, and good: it is here called _Gwingwiza_.
_15th September, 1866._--We were now a short distance south of the Lake, and might have gone west to Mosauka’s (called by some Pasauka’s) to cross the Shiré there, but I thought that my visit to Mukaté’s, a Waiyau chief still further south, might do good. He, Mponda, and
Kabinga, are the only three chiefs who still carry on raids against the Manganja at the instigation of the coast Arabs, and they are now sending periodical marauding parties to the Maravi (here named Malola) to supply the Kilwa slave-traders. We marched three hours southwards, then up the hills of the range which flanks all the lower part of the Lake. The altitude of the town is about 800 feet above the Lake. The population near the chief is large, and all the heights as far as the eye can reach are crowned with villages. The second range lies a few miles off, and is covered with trees as well as the first, the nearest high mass is Mañgoché. The people live amidst plenty. All the chiefs visited by the Arabs have good substantial square houses built for their accommodation. Mukaté never saw a European before, and everything about us is an immense curiosity to him and to his people. We had long visits from him. He tries to extract a laugh out of every remark. He is darker than the generality of Waiyau, with a full beard trained on the chin, as all the people hereabouts have--Arab fashion. The courts of his women cover a large space, our house being on one side of them. I tried to go out that way, but wandered, so the ladies sent a servant to conduct me out in the direction I wished to go, and we found egress by passing through some huts with two doors in them.
_16th September, 1866._--At Mukaté’s. The Prayer Book does not give ignorant persons any idea of an unseen Being addressed, it looks more like reading or speaking to the book: kneeling and praying with eyes shut is better than, our usual way of holding Divine service.
We had a long discussion about the slave-trade. The Arabs have told the chief that our object in capturing slavers is to get them into our own possession, and make them of our own religion. The evils which we have seen--the skulls, the ruined villages, the numbers who perish on the way to the coast and on the sea, the wholesale murders committed by the Waiyau to build up Arab villages elsewhere--these things Mukaté often tried to turn off with a laugh, but our remarks are safely lodged in many hearts. Next day, as we went along, our guide spontaneously delivered their substance to the different villages along our route. Before we reached him, a headman, in convoying me a mile or two, whispered to me, "Speak to Mukaté to give his forays up."
It is but little we can do, but we lodge a protest in the heart against a vile system, and time may ripen it. Their great argument is, "What could we do without Arab cloth?" My answer is, "Do what you did before the Arabs came into the country." At the present rate of destruction of population, the whole country will soon be a desert. An earthquake happened here last year, that is about the end of it or beginning of this (the crater on the Grand. Comoro Island smoked for three months about that time); it shook all the houses and everything, but they observed no other effects.[20] No hot springs are known here.
_17th September, 1866._--We marched down from Mukaté’s and to about the middle of the Lakelet Pamalombé. Mukaté had no people with canoes near the usual crossing place, and he sent a messenger to see that we were fairly served. Here we got the Manganja headmen to confess that an earthquake had happened; all the others we have inquired of have denied it; why, I cannot conceive. The old men said that they had felt earthquakes twice, once near sunset and the next time at night--they shook everything, and were accompanied with noise, and all the fowls cackled; there was no effect on the Lake observed. They profess ignorance of any tradition of the water having stood higher. Their traditions say that they came originally from the west, or west north-west, which they call "Maravi;" and that their forefathers taught them to make nets and kill fish. They have no trace of any teaching by a higher instructor; no carvings or writings on the rocks; and they never heard of a book until we came among them. Their forefathers never told them that after or at death they went to God, but they had heard it said of such a one who died, "God took him."
_18th September, 1866._--We embarked the whole party in eight canoes, and went up the Lake to the point of junction between it and the prolongation of Nyassa above it, called Massangano ("meetings"), which took us two hours. A fishing party there fled on seeing us, though we shouted that we were a travelling party (or "Olendo ").
Mukaté’s people here left us, and I walked up to the village of the fugitives with one attendant only. Their suspicions were so thoroughly aroused that they would do nothing. The headman (Pima) was said to be absent; they could not lend us a hut, but desired us to go on to Mponda’s. We put up a shed for ourselves, and next morning, though we pressed them for a guide, no one would come. From Pima’s village we had a fine view of Pamalombé and the range of hills on its western edge, the range which flanks the lower part of Nyassa,--on part of which Mukaté lives,--the gap of low land south of it behind which Shirwa Lake lies, and Chikala and Zomba nearly due south from us. People say hippopotami come from Lake Shirwa into Lake Nyassa. There is a great deal of vegetation in Pamalombé, gigantic rushes, duckweed, and great quantities of aquatic plants on the bottom; one slimy translucent plant is washed ashore in abundance.
Fish become very fat on these plants; one called "kadiakola" I eat much of; it has a good mass of flesh on it.
It is probable that the people of Lake Tanganyika and Nyassa, and those on the Rivers Shiré and Zambesi, are all of one stock, for the dialects vary very little.[21] I took observations on this point. An Arab slave-party, hearing of us, decamped.
_19th September, 1866._--When we had proceeded a mile this morning we came to 300 or 400 people making salt on a plain impregnated with it. They lixiviate the soil and boil the water, which has filtered through a bunch of grass in a hole in the bottom of a pot, till all is evaporated and a mass of salt left. We held along the plain till we came to Mponda’s, a large village, with a stream running past. The plain at the village is very fertile, and has many large trees on it. The cattle of Mponda are like fatted Madagascar beasts, and the hump seems as if it would weigh 100 lbs.[22] The size of body is so enormous that their legs, as remarked by our men, seemed very small. Mponda is a blustering sort of person, but immensely interested in everything European. He says that he would like to go with me. "Would not care though he were away ten years." I say that he may die in the journey.--"He will die here as well as there, but he will see all the wonderful doings of our country." He knew me, having come to the boat, to take a look _incognito_ when we were here formerly.
We found an Arab slave-party here, and went to look at the slaves; seeing this; Mponda was alarmed lest we should proceed to violence in his town, but I said to him that we went to look only. Eighty-five slaves were in a pen formed of dura stalks _(Holcus sorghum_). The majority were boys of about eight or ten years of age; others were grown men and women. Nearly all were in the taming-stick; a few of the younger ones were in thongs, the thong passing round the neck of each. Several pots were on the fires cooking dura and beans. A crowd went with us, expecting a scene, but I sat down, and asked a few questions about the journey, in front. The slave-party consisted of five or six half-caste coast Arabs, who said that they came from Zanzibar; but the crowd made such a noise that we could not hear ourselves speak. I asked if they had any objections to my looking at the slaves, the owners pointed out the different slaves, and said that after feeding them, and accounting for the losses in the way to the coast, they made little by the trip. I suspect that the gain is made by those who ship them to the ports of Arabia, for at Zanzibar most of the younger slaves we saw went at about seven dollars a head. I said to them it was a bad business altogether. They presented fowls to me in the evening.
_20th September, 1866._--The chief begged so hard that I would stay another day and give medicine to a sick child, that I consented. He promised plenty of food, and, as an earnest of his sincerity, sent an immense pot of beer in the evening. The child had been benefited by the medicine given yesterday. He offered more food than we chose to take. The agricultural class does not seem to be a servile one: all cultivate, and the work is esteemed. The chief was out at his garden when we arrived, and no disgrace is attached to the field labourer. The slaves very likely do the chief part of the work, but all engage in it, and are proud of their skill. Here a great deal of grain is raised, though nearly all the people are Waiyau or Machinga. This is remarkable, as they have till lately been marauding and moving from place to place. The Manganja possessed the large breed of humped cattle which fell into the hands of the Waiyau, and knew how to milk them. Their present owners never milk them, and they have dwindled into a few instead of the thousands of former times.[23] A lion killed a woman early yesterday morning, and ate most of her undisturbed.
It is getting very hot; the ground to the feet of the men "burns like fire" after noon, so we are now obliged to make short marches, and early in the morning chiefly.
Wikatani--Bishop Mackenzie’s favourite boy--met a brother here, and he finds that he has an elder brother and a sister at Kabinga’s. The father who sold him into slavery is dead. He wishes to stop with his relatives, and it will be well if he does. Though he has not much to say, what he does advance against the slave-trade will have its weight, and it will all be in the way of preparation for better times and more light. The elder brother was sent for, but had not arrived when it was necessary for us to leave Mponda’s on the Rivulet Ntemangokwé. I therefore gave Wikatani some cloth, a flint gun instead of the percussion one he carried, some flints, paper to write upon, and commended him to Mponda’s care till his relatives arrived. He has lately shown a good deal of levity, and perhaps it is best that he should have a touch of what the world is in reality.
[In a letter written about this time Dr. Livingstone, in speaking of Wikatani, says, "He met with a brother, and found that he had two brothers and one or two sisters living down at the western shore of Lake Pamelombé under Kabinga. He thought that his relatives would not again sell him. I had asked him if he wished to remain, and he at once said yes, so I did not attempt to dissuade him: his excessive levity will perhaps be cooled by marriage. I think he may do good by telling some of what he has seen and heard. I asked him if he would obey an order from his chief to hunt the Manganja, and he said, ’No.’ I hope he won’t. In the event of any mission coming into the country of Mataka, he will go there. I gave him paper to write to you,[24] and, commending him to the chiefs, bade the poor boy farewell. I was sorry to part with him, but the Arabs tell the Waiyau chiefs that our object in liberating slaves is to make them our own and turn them to our religion. I had declared to them, through Wikatani as interpreter, that they never became our slaves, and were at liberty to go back to their relatives if they liked; and now it was impossible to object to Wikatani going without stultifying my own statements." It is only necessary to repeat that Wikatani and Chuma had been liberated from the slavers by Dr. Livingstone and Bishop Mackenzie in 1861; they were mere children when set free.
We must not forget to record the fact that when Mr. Young reached Maponda, two years afterwards, to ascertain whether the Doctor really had been murdered, as Musa declared, he was most hospitably received by the chief, who had by this time a great appreciation of everything English.] The lines of tattoo of the different tribes serve for ornaments, and are resorted to most by the women; it is a sort of heraldry closely resembling the Highland tartans.
[Illustration: Manganja and Machinga women (from a Drawing by the late Dr. Meller).]
FOOTNOTES:
[16] Coal was shown to a group of natives when first the _Pioneer_ascended the river Shiré. Members of numerous tribes were present, and all recognised it at once as Makala or coal.--ED.
[17] Dr. Livingstone heard this subsequently when at Casembe’s.
[18] The greater part were driven down into the Manganja country by war and famine combined, and eventually filled the slave gangs of the Portuguese, whose agents went from Tette and Senna to procure them.--ED.
[19] Pronounced Mkata by the Waiyau.--ED.
[20] Earthquakes are by no means uncommon. A slight shock was felt in 1861 at Magomero; on asking the natives if they knew the cause of it, they replied that on one occasion, after a very severe earthquake which shook boulders off the mountains, all the wise men of the country assembled to talk about it and came to the following conclusion, that a star had fallen from heaven into the sea, and that the bubbling caused the whole earth to rock; they said the effect was the same as that caused by throwing, a red-hot stone into a pot of water.--ED.
[21] The Waiyau language differs very much from the Nyassa, and is exceedingly difficult to master: it holds good from the coast to Nyassa, but to the west of the Lake the Nyassa tongue is spoken over a vast tract.--ED.
[22] We shall see that more to the north the hump entirely disappears.
[23] It is very singular to witness the disgust with which the idea of drinking milk is received by most of these tribes when we remember that the Caffre nations on the south, and again, tribes more to the north, subsist principally on it. A lad will undergo punishment rather than milk a goat. Eggs are likewise steadily eschewed.--ED.
[24] To myself.--ED.