The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death Volume I Part 2

Whether exchanging the customary civilities, or arriving at a village, accepting a night's lodging, purchasing food for the party, asking for information, or answering polite African enquiries as to our objects in travelling, we begin to spread a knowledge of that people by whose agency their land will yet become enlightened and freed from the slave-trade.

The mere animal pleasure of travelling in a wild unexplored country is very great. When on lands of a couple of thousand feet elevation, brisk exercise imparts elasticity to the muscles, fresh and healthy blood circulates through the brain, the mind works well, the eye is clear, the step is firm, and a day's exertion always makes the evening's repose thoroughly enjoyable.

We have usually the stimulus of remote chances of danger either from beasts or men. Our sympathies are drawn out towards our humble hardy companions by a community of interests, and, it may be, of perils, which make us all friends. Nothing but the most pitiable puerility would lead any manly heart to make their inferiority a theme for self-exaltation; however, that is often done, as if with the vague idea that we can, by magnifying their deficiencies, demonstrate our immaculate perfections.

The effect of travel on a man whose heart is in the right place is that the mind is made more self-reliant: it becomes more confident of its own resources--there is greater presence of mind. The body is soon well-knit; the muscles of the limbs grow as hard as a board, and seem to have no fat; the countenance is bronzed, and there is no dyspepsia.

Africa is a most wonderful country for appet.i.te, and it is only when one gloats over marrow bones or elephant's feet that indigestion is possible. No doubt much toil is involved, and fatigue of which travellers in the more temperate climes can form but a faint conception; but the sweat of one's brow is no longer a curse when one works for G.o.d: it proves a tonic to the system, and is actually a blessing. No one can truly appreciate the charm of repose unless he has undergone severe exertion.

_27th March, 1866._--The point of land which on the north side of the entrance to the harbour narrows it to about 300 yards is alone called Pemba; the other parts have different names. Looking northwards from the point, the first hundred yards has ninety square houses of wattled daub; a ruin (a mosque) has been built of lime and coral. The whole point is coral, and the soil is red, and covered over with dense tropical vegetation, in which the baobab is conspicuous. Dhows at present come in with ease by the easterly wind which blows in the evening, and leave next morning, the land wind taking them out.

While the camels and other animals are getting over their fatigues and bad bruises, we are making camels' saddles, and repairing those of the mules and buffaloes. Oysters abound on all the rocks and on the trees over which the tide flows: they are small, but much relished by the people.

The Arabs here are a wretched lot physically--thin, washed-out creatures--many with bleared eyes.

_29-30th March, 1866._--- This harbour has somewhat the shape of a bent bow or the spade on a playing-card, the shaft of the arrow being the entrance in; the pa.s.sage is very deep, but not more than 100 yards wide, and it goes in nearly S.W.; inside it is deep and quite secure, and protected from all winds. The lands westward rise at once to about 200 feet, and John, a hill, is the landmark by which it is best known in coming along the coast--so say the Arabs. The people have no cattle, but say there are no tsetse flies: they have not been long here, _i.e._ under the present system; but a ruin on the northern peninsula or face of the entrance, built of stone and lime--Arab-fas.h.i.+on, and others on the north-west, show that the place has been known and used of old. The adjacent country has large game at different water pools, and as the whole country is somewhat elevated it probably is healthy. There is very little mangrove, but another enclosed piece of water to the south of this probably has more. The language of the people here is Swaheli; they trade a little in gum-copal and Orchilla weed. An agent of the Zanzibar custom-house presides over the customs, which are very small, and a jemidar acknowledging the Sultan is the chief authority; but the people are little superior to the natives whom they have displaced. The jemidar has been very civil to me, and gives me two guides to go on to Adonde, but no carriers can be hired. Water is found in wells in the coral rock which underlies the whole place.

_4th April, 1866._--When about to start from Pemba, at the entrance to the other side of the bay one of our buffaloes gored a donkey so badly that he had to be shot: we cut off the tips of the offender's horns, on the principle of "locking the stable-door when the steed is stolen," and marched. We came to level spots devoid of vegetation, and hard on the surface, but a deposit of water below allowed the camels to sink up to their bodies through the crust. Hauling them out, we got along to the jemidar's house, which is built of coral and lime. Hamesh was profuse in his professions of desire to serve, but gave a shabby hut which let in rain and wind. I slept one night in it, and it was unbearable, so I asked the jemidar to allow me to sleep in his court-room, where many of the sepoys were: he consented, but when I went refused; then, being an excitable, nervous Arab, he took fright, mustered all his men, amounting to about fifteen, with matchlocks; ran off, saying he was going to kill a lion; came back, shook hands nervously with me, vowing it was a man who would not obey him, "it was not you."

Our goods were all out in the street, bound on the pack-saddles, so at night we took the ordinary precaution of setting a guard. This excited our dignitary, and after dark all his men were again mustered with matches lighted. I took no notice of him, and after he had spent a good deal of talk, which we could hear, he called Musa and asked what I meant. The explanations of Musa had the effect of sending him to bed, and in the morning, when I learned how much I had most unintentionally disturbed him, I told him that I was sorry, but it did not occur to me to tell him about an ordinary precaution against thieves. He thought he had given me a crus.h.i.+ng reply when he said with vehemence, "But there are no thieves here." I did not know till afterwards that he and others had done me an ill turn in saying that no carriers could be hired from the independent tribes adjacent. They are low-coast Arabs, three-quarters African, and, as usual, possess the bad without the good qualities of both parents. Many of them came and begged brandy, and laughed when they remarked that they could drink it in secret but not openly; they have not, however, introduced it as an article of trade, as we Christians have done on the West Coast.

_6th April, 1866._--We made a short march round to the south-west side of the Lake, and spent the night at a village in that direction. There are six villages dotted round the inner harbour, and the population may amount to 250 or 300 souls--coast Arabs and their slaves; the southern portion of the harbour is deep, from ten to fourteen fathoms, but the north-western part is shoal and rocky. Very little is done in the way of trade; some sorghum, sem-sem seed, gum-copal, and orchilla weed, const.i.tute the commerce of the port: I saw two Banian traders settled here.

_7th April, 1866._--Went about south from Kindany with a Somalie guide, named Ben Ali or Bon Ali, a good-looking obliging man, who was to get twenty dollars to take us up to Ngomano. Our path lay in a valley, with well-wooded heights on each side, but the gra.s.s towered over our heads, and gave the sensation of smothering, whilst the sun beat down on our heads very fiercely, and there was not a breath of air stirring. Not understanding camels, I had to trust to the sepoys who overloaded them, and before we had accomplished our march of about seven miles they were knocked up.

_8th April, 1866._--We spent the Sunday at a village called Nyangedi.

Here on the evening of the 7th April our buffaloes and camels were first bitten by the tsetse fly.[5] We had pa.s.sed through some pieces of dense jungle which, though they offered no obstruction to foot-pa.s.sengers, but rather an agreeable shade, had to be cut for the tall camels, and fortunately we found the Makonde of this village glad to engage themselves by the day either as woodcutters or carriers. We had left many things with the jemidar from an idea that no carriers could be procured. I lightened the camels, and had a party of woodcutters to heighten and widen the path in the dense jungle into which we now penetrated. Every now and then we emerged on open s.p.a.ces, where the Makonde have cleared gardens for sorghum, maize, and ca.s.sava. The people were very much more taken up with the camels and buffaloes than with me. They are all independent of each other, and no paramount chief exists. Their foreheads may be called compact, narrow, and rather low; the _alae nasi_ expanded laterally; lips full, not excessively thick; limbs and body well formed; hands and feet small; colour dark and light-brown; height middle size, and bearing independent.

_10th April, 1866._--We reached a village called Narri, lat. 10 23'

14" S. Many of the men had touches of fever. I gave medicine to eleven of them, and next morning all were better. Food is abundant and cheap.

Our course is nearly south, and in "wadys," from which, following the trade-road, we often ascend the heights, and then from the villages, which are on the higher land, we descend to another on the same wady.

No running water is seen; the people depend on wells for a supply.

_11th April, 1866._--At Tandahara we were still ascending as we went south; the soil is very fertile, with a good admixture of sand in it, but no rocks are visible. Very heavy crops of maize and sorghum are raised, and the ca.s.sava bushes are seven feet in height. The bamboos are cleared off them, spread over the s.p.a.ce to be cultivated and burned to serve as manure. Iron is very scarce, for many of the men appear with wooden spears; they find none here, but in some spots where an ooze issued from the soil iron rust appeared. At each of the villages where we spent a night we presented a fathom of calico, and the headman always gave a fowl or two, and a basket of rice or maize.

The Makonde dialect is quite different from Swaheli, but from their intercourse with the coast Arabs many of the people here have acquired a knowledge of Swaheli.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A Thorn-climber.]

_12th April, 1866._--On starting we found the jungle so dense that the people thought "there was no cutting it:" it continued upwards of three miles. The trees are not large, but so closely planted together that a great deal of labour was required to widen and heighten the path: where bamboos prevail they have starved out the woody trees. The reason why the trees are not large is because all the s.p.a.ces we pa.s.sed over were formerly garden ground before the Makonde had been thinned by the slave-trade. As soon as a garden is deserted, a thick crop of trees of the same sorts as those formerly cut down springs up, and here the process of woody trees starving out their fellows, and occupying the land without dense scrub below, has not had time to work itself out. Many are mere poles, and so intertwined with climbers as to present the appearance of a s.h.i.+p's ropes and cables shaken in among them, and many have woody stems as thick as an eleven-inch hawser. One species may be likened to the scabbard of a dragoon's sword, but along the middle of the flat side runs a ridge, from which springs up every few inches a bunch of inch-long straight sharp thorns. It hangs straight for a couple of yards, but as if it could not give its thorns a fair chance of mischief, it suddenly bends on itself, and all its cruel points are now at right angles to what they were before.

Darwin's observation shows a great deal of what looks like instinct in these climbers. This species seems to be eager for mischief; its tangled limbs hang out ready to inflict injury on all pa.s.sers-by.

Another climber is so tough it is not to be broken by the fingers; another appears at its root as a young tree, but it has the straggling habits of its cla.s.s, as may be seen by its cords stretched some fifty or sixty feet off; it is often two inches in diameter; you cut it through at one part and find it reappear forty yards off.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Tomahawk and Axe.]

Another climber is like the leaf of an aloe, but convoluted as strangely as shavings from the plane of a carpenter. It is dark green in colour, and when its bark is taken off it is beautifully striated beneath, lighter and darker green, like the rings of growth on wood; still another is a thin string with a succession of large k.n.o.bs, and another has its bark pinched up all round at intervals so as to present a great many cutting edges. One sort need scarcely be mentioned, in which all along its length are strong bent hooks, placed in a way that will hold one if it can but grapple with him, for that is very common and not like those mentioned, which the rather seem to be stragglers from the carboniferous period of geologists, when Pachydermata wriggled unscathed among tangled ma.s.ses worse than these.

We employed about ten jolly young Makonde to deal with these prehistoric plants in their own way, for they are accustomed to clearing s.p.a.ces for gardens, and went at the work with a will, using tomahawks well adapted for the work. They whittled away right manfully, taking an axe when any trees had to be cut. Their pay, arranged beforehand, was to be one yard of calico per day: this is not much, seeing we are still so near the sea-coast. Climbers and young trees melted before them like a cloud before the sun! Many more would have worked than we employed, but we used the precaution of taking the names of those engaged. The tall men became exhausted soonest, while the shorter men worked vigorously still--but a couple of days'

hard work seemed to tell on the best of them. It is doubtful if any but meat-eating people can stand long-continued labour without exhaustion: the Chinese may be an exception. When French navvies were first employed they could not do a t.i.the of the work of our English ones; but when the French were fed in the same style as the English, they performed equally well. Here the Makonde have rarely the chance of a good feed of meat: it is only when one of them is fortunate enough to spear a wild hog or an antelope that they know this luxury; if a fowl is eaten they get but a taste of it with their porridge.

_13th April, 1866._--We now began to descend the northern slope down to the Rovuma, and a glimpse could occasionally be had of the country; it seemed covered with great ma.s.ses of dark green forest, but the undulations occasionally looked like hills, and here and there a Sterculia had put on yellow foliage in antic.i.p.ation of the coming winter. More frequently our vision was circ.u.mscribed to a few yards till our merry woodcutters made for us the pleasant scene of a long vista fit for camels to pa.s.s: as a whole, the jungle would have made the authors of the natty little hints to travellers smile at their own productions, good enough, perhaps, where one has an open country with trees and hills; by which to take bearings, estimate distances, see that one point is on the same lat.i.tude, another on the same longitude with such another, and all to be laid down fair and square with protractor and compa.s.s, but so long as we remained within the vegetation, that is fed by the moisture from the Indian Ocean, the steamy, smothering air, and dank, rank, luxuriant vegetation made me feel, like it, struggling for existence,--and no more capable of taking bearings than if I had been in a hogshead and observing through the bunghole!

An old Monyinko headman presented a goat and asked if the sepoys wished to cut its throat: the Johannees, being of a different sect of Mahometans, wanted to cut it in some other way than their Indian co-religionists: then ensued a fierce dispute as to who was of the right sort of Moslem! It was interesting to see that not Christians alone, but other nations feel keenly on religious subjects.

I saw rocks of grey sandstone (like that which overlies coal) and the Rovuma in the distance. Didi is the name of a village whose headsman, Chombokea, is said to be a doctor; all the headmen pretend or are really doctors; however one, Fundindomba, came after me for medicine for himself.

_14th April, 1866._--To-day we succeeded in reaching the Rovuma, where some very red cliffs appear on the opposite heights, and close by where it is marked on the map that the _Pioneer_ turned back in 1861.

Here we rested on Sunday 15th.

_16th April, 1866._--Our course now lay westwards, along the side of that ragged outline of table-land, which we had formerly seen from the river as flanking both sides. There it appeared a range of hills shutting in Rovuma, here we had spurs jutting out towards the river, and valleys retiring from a mile to three miles inland. Sometimes we wended our way round them, sometimes rose over and descended their western sides, and then a great deal of wood-cutting was required. The path is not straight, but from one village to another. We came perpetually on gardens, and remarked that rice was sown among the other grain; there must be a good deal of moisture at other times to admit of this succeeding: at present the crops were suffering for want of rain. We could purchase plenty of rice for the sepoys, and well it was so, for the supply which was to last till we arrived at Ngomano was finished on the 13th. An old doctor, with our food awaiting, presented me with two large bags of rice and his wife husked it for us.

_17th April, 1866._--I had to leave the camels in the hands of the sepoys: I ordered them to bring as little luggage as possible, and the Havildar a.s.sured me that two buffaloes were amply sufficient to carry all they would bring. I now find that they have more than full loads for two buffaloes, two mules, and two donkeys; but when these animals fall down under them, they a.s.sure me with so much positiveness that they are not overloaded, that I have to be silent, or only, as I have several times done before, express the opinion that they will kill these animals. This observation on my part leads them to hide their things in the packs of the camels, which also are over-burdened. I fear that my experiment with the tsetse will be vitiated, but no symptoms yet occur in any of the camels except weariness.[6] The sun is very sharp; it scorches. Nearly all the sepoys had fever, but it is easily cured; they never required to stop marching, and we cannot make over four or five miles a day, which movement aids in the cure. In all cases of fever removal from the spot of attack should be made: after the fever among the sepoys, the Na.s.sick boys took their turn along with the Johannees.

_18th April, 1866._--Ben Ali misled us away up to the north in spite of my protest, when we turned in that direction; he declared that was the proper path. We had much wood-cutting, and found that our course that day and next was to enable him to visit and return from one of his wives--a comely Makonde woman! He brought her to call on me, and I had to be polite to the lady, though we lost a day by the zigzag. This is one way by which the Arabs gain influence; a great many very light-coloured people are strewed among the Makonde, but only one of these had the Arab hair. On asking Ali whether any attempts had been made by Arabs to convert those with whom they enter into such intimate relations.h.i.+ps, he replied that the Makonde had no idea of a Deity--no one could teach them, though Makonde slaves when taken to the coast and elsewhere were made Mahometans. Since the slave-trade was introduced this tribe has much diminished in numbers, and one village makes war upon another and kidnaps, but no religious teaching has been attempted. The Arabs come down to the native ways, and make no efforts to raise the natives to theirs; it is better that it is so, for the coast Arab's manners and morals would be no improvement on the pagan African!

_19th April, 1866._--We were led up over a hill again, and on to the level of the plateau (where the evaporation is greater than in the valley), and tasted water of an agreeable coldness for the first time this journey. The people, especially the women, are very rude, and the men very eager to be employed as woodcutters. Very merry they are at it, and every now and then one raises a cheerful shout, in which all join. I suppose they are urged on by a desire to please their wives with a little clothing. The higher up the Rovuma we ascend the people are more and more tattooed on the face, and on all parts of the body.

The teeth are filed to points, and huge lip-rings are worn by the women; some few Mabeha men from the south side of the river have lip-rings too.

_20th April, 1866._--A Johanna man allowed the camels to trespa.s.s and destroy a man's tobacco patch: the owner would not allow us after this to pa.s.s through his rice-field, in which the route lay. I examined the damage, and made the Johanna man pay a yard of calico for it, which set matters all right.

Tsetse are biting the buffaloes again. Elephants, hippopotami, and pigs are the only game here, but we see none: the tsetse feed on them. In the low meadow land, from one to three miles broad, which lies along both banks, we have brackish pools, and one, a large one, which we pa.s.sed, called Wrongwe, had much fish, and salt is got from it.

_21st April, 1866._--After a great deal of cutting we reached the valley of Mehambwe to spend Sunday, all glad that it had come round again. Here some men came to our camp from Ndonde, who report that an invasion of Mazitu had three months ago swept away all the food out of the country, and they are now obliged to send in every direction for provisions. When saluting, they catch each other's hands and say, "Ai!

Ai!" but the general mode (introduced, probably by the Arabs) is to take hold of the right hand, and say, "Marhaba" (welcome).

A wall-eyed ill-looking fellow, who helped to urge on the attack on our first visit in 1861, and the man to whom I gave cloth to prevent a collision, came about us disguised in a jacket. I knew him well, but said nothing to him.[7]

_23rd April, 1866._--When we marched this morning we pa.s.sed the spot where an animal had been burned in the fire, and on enquiry I found that it is the custom when a leopard is killed to take off the skin and consume the carcase thus, because the Makonde do not eat it. The reason they gave for not eating flesh which is freely eaten by other tribes, is that the leopard devours men; this shows the opposite of an inclination to cannibalism.

All the rocks we had seen showed that the plateau consists of grey sandstone, capped by a ferruginous sandy conglomerate. We now came to blocks of silicified wood lying on the surface; it is so like recent wood, that no one who has not handled it would conceive it to be stone and not wood: the outer surface preserves the grain or woody fibre, the inner is generally silica.

Buffaloes bitten by tsetse again show no bad effects from it: one mule is, however, dull and out of health; I thought that this might be the effect of the bite till I found that his back was so strained that he could not stoop to drink, and could only eat the tops of the gra.s.ses.

An ox would have been ill in two days after the biting on the 7th.

A carrier stole a s.h.i.+rt, and went off unsuspected; when the loss was ascertained, the man's companions tracked him with Ben Ali by night, got him in his hut, and then collected the headmen of the village, who fined him about four times the value of what had been stolen. They came back in the morning without seeming to think that they had done aught to be commended; this was the only case of theft we had noticed, and the treatment showed a natural sense of justice.

_24th April, 1866._--We had showers occasionally, but at night all the men were under cover of screens. The fevers were speedily cured; no day was lost by sickness, but we could not march more than a few miles, owing to the slowness of the sepoys; they are a heavy drag on us, and of no possible use, except when acting as sentries at night.

When in the way between Kendany and Rovuma, I observed a plant here, called _Mandare_, the root of which is in taste and appearance like a waxy potato; I saw it once before at the falls below the Barotse Valley, in the middle of the continent; it had been brought there by an emigrant, who led out the water for irrigation, and it still maintained its place in the soil. Would this not prove valuable in the soil of India? I find that it is not cultivated further up the country of the Makonde, but I shall get Ali to secure some for Bombay.

_25th April, 1866._--A serpent bit Jack, our dog, above the eye, the upper eyelid swelled very much, but no other symptoms appeared, and next day all swelling was gone; the serpent was either harmless, or the quant.i.ty of poison injected very small. The pace of the camels is distressingly slow, and it suits the sepoys to make it still slower than natural by sitting down to smoke and eat. The gra.s.s is high and ground under it damp and steamy.

_26th April, 1866._--On the 25th we reached Narri, and resolved to wait the next day and buy food, as it is not so plentiful in front; the people are eager traders in meal, fowls, eggs, and honey; the women are very rude. Yesterday I caught a sepoy, Pando, belabouring a camel with a big stick as thick as any part of his arm, the path being narrow, it could not get out of his way; I shouted to him to desist; he did not know I was in sight, to-day the effect of the bad usage is seen in the animal being quite unable to move its leg: inflammation has set up in the hip-joint. I am afraid that several bruises which have festered on the camels, and were to me unaccountable, have been wilfully bestowed. This same Pando and another left Zanzibar drunk: he then stole a pair of socks from me, and has otherwise been perfectly useless, even a pimple on his leg was an excuse for doing nothing for many days. We had to leave this camel at Narri under charge of the headman.

_28th April, 1866._--The hills on the north now retire out of our sight. A gap in the southern plateau gives pa.s.sage to a small river, which arises in a lakelet of some size, eight or ten miles inland: the river and lakelet are both called Nangadi; the latter is so broad that men cannot be distinguished, even by the keen eyes of the natives on the other side: it is very deep, and abounds in large fish; the people who live there are Mabiha. A few miles above this gap the southern highland falls away, and there are lakelets on marshes, also abounding in fish, an uninhabited s.p.a.ce next succeeds, and then we have the Matambwe country, which extends up to Ngomano. The Matambwe seem to be a branch of the Makonde, and a very large one: their country extends a long way south, and is well stocked with elephants and gum-copal trees.

They speak a language slightly different from that of the Makonde, but they understand them. The Matambwe women are, according to Ali, very dark, but very comely, though they do wear the lip-ring. They carry their ivory, gum-copal, and slaves to Ibo or Wibo.

_29th April, 1866._--We spend Sunday, the 29th, on the banks of the Rovuma, at a village called Nachuchu, nearly opposite Konayumba, the first of the Matambwe, whose chief is called Kimbembe. Ali draws a very dark picture of the Makonde. He says they know nothing of a Deity, they pray to their mothers when in distress or dying; know nothing of a future state, nor have they any religion except a belief in medicine; and every headsman is a doctor. No Arab has ever tried to convert them, but occasionally a slave taken to the coast has been circ.u.mcised in order to be clean; some of them pray, and say they know not the ordeal or muavi. The Na.s.sick boys failed me when I tried to communicate some knowledge through them. They say they do not understand the Makonde language, though some told me that they came from Ndonde's, which is the head-quarters of the Makonde. Ali says that the Makonde blame witches for disease and death; when one of a village dies, the whole population departs, saying "that is a bad spot." They are said to have been notorious for fines, but an awe has come over them, and no complaints have been made, though our animals in pa.s.sing the gardens have broken a good deal of corn. Ali says they fear the English. This is an answer to my prayer for influence on the minds of the heathen. I regret that I cannot speak to them that good of His name which I ought.

I went with the Makonde to see a specimen of the gum-copal tree in the vicinity of this village. The leaves are in pairs, glossy green, with the veins a little raised on both face and back; the smaller branches diverge from the same point: the fruit, of which we saw the sh.e.l.ls, seems to be a nut; some animal had in eating them cut them through.

The bark of the tree is of a light ash colour; the gum was oozing from the bark at wounded places, and it drops on the ground from branches; it is thus that insects are probably imbedded in the gum-copal. The people dig in the vicinity of modern trees in the belief that the more ancient trees which dropped their gum before it became an article of commerce must have stood there. "In digging, none may be found on one day but G.o.d (Mungu) may give it to us on the next." To this all the Makonde present a.s.sented, and showed me the consciousness of His existence was present in their minds. The Makonde get the gum in large quant.i.ties, and this attracts the coast Arabs, who remain a long time in the country purchasing it. Hernia humoralis abounds; it is ascribed to beer-drinking.