The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death Volume I Part 8

The Manganja, or Wa-nya.s.sa, are an aboriginal race; they have great ma.s.ses 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 sp.a.w.ning; this operation over, the house is left.

I gave Mokalaose some pumpkin seed and peas. He took me into his house, and presented a quant.i.ty 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 sh.o.r.e 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 Lilole. Another we crossed before coming to it is named Libesa: these brooks form the favourite sp.a.w.ning 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 pa.s.sed 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 b.u.t.tresses 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. Pa.s.sing 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 s.h.i.+llings 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 Misinje, before we came to the confluence. The woman chief, Ulenjelenje, or Njelenje, 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 sh.o.r.e; 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 sh.e.l.ls: 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 Lotende, another of these torrents: each very lofty ma.s.s 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 Nkore. 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 Misinje. Those which are greater are marked thus +, and the lesser ones -.

1. Misinje + has canoes.

2. Loangwa - 3. Lesefa - 4. Lelula - 5. Nchamanje - 6. Musumba + 7. Fubwe + 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 s.h.i.+re's continual flow.

[It will be remembered that the beautiful river s.h.i.+re carries off the waters of Lake Nya.s.sa 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 s.h.i.+re, 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 Nya.s.sa, 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 Gome, and, being now within three miles of the end of the Lake, we could see the whole plainly. There we first saw the s.h.i.+re emerge, and there also we first gazed on the broad waters of Nya.s.sa.

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 s.h.i.+re, and with him all hope of the Gospel being introduced into Central Africa. The silly abandonment of all the advantages of the s.h.i.+re route by the Bishop's successor I shall ever bitterly deplore, but all will come right some day, though I may not live to partic.i.p.ate 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 Mukate,[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 s.h.i.+re, 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 Lessefa, the accentuated _e_ being sounded as our _e_ in _set_.

This word would puzzle a German philologist, as being the origin of Nussewa, but the Waiyau p.r.o.nounce it Losewa, the Arabs Lussewa, and Roscher's servant transformed the _L_ and _e_ into _N_ and _ee_, hence Nusseewa. In confirmation of this rivulet Lesefa, which is opposite Kotakota, or, as the Arabs p.r.o.nounce 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 Moembe, 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 Nya.s.sa. 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 a.s.suming 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.

_Tangare_ 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 s.h.i.+re there, but I thought that my visit to Mukate'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 alt.i.tude 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 ma.s.s is Mangoche. The people live amidst plenty. All the chiefs visited by the Arabs have good substantial square houses built for their accommodation. Mukate 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 fas.h.i.+on.

The courts of his women cover a large s.p.a.ce, 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 pa.s.sing through some huts with two doors in them.

_16th September, 1866._--At Mukate'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 Mukate 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 Mukate 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 Mukate's and to about the middle of the Lakelet Pamalombe. Mukate 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 G.o.d, but they had heard it said of such a one who died, "G.o.d 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 Nya.s.sa above it, called Ma.s.sangano ("meetings"), which took us two hours. A fis.h.i.+ng party there fled on seeing us, though we shouted that we were a travelling party (or "Olendo ").

Mukate'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 Pamalombe and the range of hills on its western edge, the range which flanks the lower part of Nya.s.sa,--on part of which Mukate lives,--the gap of low land south of it behind which s.h.i.+rwa Lake lies, and Chikala and Zomba nearly due south from us. People say hippopotami come from Lake s.h.i.+rwa into Lake Nya.s.sa. There is a great deal of vegetation in Pamalombe, gigantic rushes, duckweed, and great quant.i.ties of aquatic plants on the bottom; one slimy translucent plant is washed ash.o.r.e in abundance.

Fish become very fat on these plants; one called "kadiakola" I eat much of; it has a good ma.s.s of flesh on it.

It is probable that the people of Lake Tanganyika and Nya.s.sa, and those on the Rivers s.h.i.+re 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 gra.s.s in a hole in the bottom of a pot, till all is evaporated and a ma.s.s 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 bl.u.s.tering 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 pa.s.sing 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 s.h.i.+p 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 cla.s.s 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.