Chapter XX Retrospect
At the Entrance to the Red Sea.
Christmas and New Year’s Eve were passed at sea, with the usual festivities; the latter, on which the dancing was kept up with equal enthusiasm and energy by German and English passengers, was also the eve of our arrival at Suez.
About noon on the first day of January, 1907, I set foot on the soil of Egypt, which I have only just left, after a stay of nearly three weeks. I had a great desire to study the relics of ancient Egyptian culture on the spot, and therefore left Cairo and its neighbourhood as speedily as possible for Upper Egypt—Luxor, Karnak and Deir el Bahri. From a climatic point of view, also, Cairo was not well adapted for an intermediate station between the tropics and the winter of Northern Europe. One after another of our passengers remaining behind for a tour in Egypt became indisposed. Some, therefore, took the next boat for Germany, arguing that their colds “would cost less at home,” while others made off up the Nile by train de luxe, in order to accustom themselves slowly and carefully in the glorious desert air of Assuan to the sub-arctic climate of Ulaya.
The Assuan dam is historically a piece of Vandalism, technically a meritorious piece of engineering, economically a truly great achievement. The narrow-gauge railway winds up the Nile in sharp curves between Luxor and Assuan. Sometimes the Nile flows in immediate proximity to the track—sometimes there is a narrow strip of alluvial level between the sacred stream and the new unholy iron road. All this time one is oppressed by the narrowness of the country; it seems as if the first high wind must blow the sand right across it and bury it altogether. Suddenly the bare hills on the left retreat: a wide plain opens out before us, only bounded in the far distance by the sharp contours of the hills in the Arabian Desert. The plain itself, too, is a desert—but how long will it remain so? Turn to the right and consider the great block of buildings which meets your eye. It is neither Egyptian nor Arabian, there is none of the dirt of Fellah barbarism about it; on the contrary, it represents the purest Anglo-American factory style. The tall chimney crowning the whole, and emitting a dense cloud of smoke, forms an incongruous contrast with its surroundings—the silver Nile with its border of green fields, running like a ribbon across the boundless sands of the desert to east and west. Look before you at the straight canal crossing the plain and lost to sight in the distance and the ditches and channels by which it distributes the Nile water in all directions, with perfect regularity. The building is a pumping-station, established to restore the desert plain by irrigation to its former fertility. Now it is still perfectly bare: in a few months’ time, it will be a sea of waving corn with stalks bearing fruit a hundredfold.
The economic exploitation of the Upper Nile Valley is an example which ought to be followed by our own colonial administration. Without a resolute purpose, without capital, and without accurate knowledge of the country and its resources, even that English or American company could do nothing. We need all three factors, if we want to make any progress, whether in Eastern or in South-Western Africa, in Kamerun or in Togo. There is only one small point of difference—the alluvial soil of the Nile Valley, accumulated through many myriads of years needs nothing but irrigation to once more make it into arable soil of the first quality. The Nile, wisely regulated, is the magic wand which will, almost instantaneously, change the desert into a fruitful field. This transforming agency is absent in the bush and steppes of German East Africa. It is true that that country possesses numerous streams, but at present their volume of water is subject to no regulation, and none of them is navigable on the same imposing scale as the Nile. In the course of years, no doubt, the Pangani will become an artery of traffic, as also the Rufiji, and perhaps our frontier stream, the Rovuma; but it will not be within the lifetime of the present generation.
The soil of German East Africa, too, cannot be compared with that of Egypt; it is no alluvial deposit, rich in humus, but in general a tolerably poor one, produced by the weathering of the outcropping rocks and not to be rendered fertile by moisture alone. Nevertheless, so far as I am able to judge, the water question remains the cardinal one in our colonial agriculture. At Saadani they have begun at once to do things on the grand scale, breaking up large areas with steam-ploughs, in the hope that wholesale cotton cultivation may put an end to the American monopoly. So far this is very good; the temperature is favourable, and the soil quite suitable for such a crop. One factor only is uncertain: German East Africa, like India, is never able to reckon on a normal amount of atmospheric moisture—and, if the rains fail, what then?
The Dark Continent has often been compared to an inverted plate. The land slopes gently upwards from the sea-shore, the angle of inclination gradually becoming greater, till we have a bordering range of mountains of considerable height. But it is only as seen from the coast that this range can be said to have a mountainous character; once he has crossed it, the traveller finds that, as on the heights of the Harz or the Rhenish slate mountains, he is on a plain almost level with its summit. To carry out the comparison with the plate, we may say that he has now crossed the narrow ledge at the bottom, and is now walking over the horizontal surface within that ledge.
This peculiar conformation has to be taken into account by those engaged in developing our colonies, i.e., in the first place, it is responsible for the fact that the rivers are navigable only to a very slight degree, if at all. In the second place, the greater part of the rainfall is precipitated on the seaward slope of the range, while its other side is almost rainless, which accounts for the arid character of Ugogo and the neighbouring districts. Yet the greater part even of this interior has a soil on which any crops which can be cultivated at all in Equatorial Africa are well able to thrive. The planter there is fortunate in being able to count on the vivifying influence of the tropical sun, which, throughout the year, conjures flourishing fields out of the merest sand. In the south I was able, day after day, to convince myself of the truth of this assertion.
The South has hitherto been the Cinderella of our colonial districts, and I fear it is likely to remain so. The prejudice as to its barrenness has deterred both official and private enterprise. It is true that neither the Mwera Plateau nor the Makonde highlands, nor the wide plains extending behind these two upland areas, between the Rovuma in the south and the Mbemkuru or the Rufiji in the north, can be called fertile. Sand and loam, loam and sand, in the one case, and quartz detritus in the other, are the dominant note of the whole. Yet we have absolutely no reason to despair of this country, for if the native can make a living out of the soil, without manuring and with none of the appliances of our highly-developed intensive farming—if this same native is in a position to export an appreciable fraction of his produce in the shape of sesamum, ground-nuts, rubber, wax, cereals and pulse—it would surely be strange if the white man could not make much more out of the same ground.
One thing, indeed, must never be forgotten: neither this district nor Africa in general is a pays de Cocagne where roast pigeons will fly of their own accord into people’s mouths; work, unceasing, strenuous work, is just as much an indispensable condition of progress as in less happy climates. We have had sufficient opportunity to observe and appreciate this persevering industry in the case of the Makonde, the Yaos, and the Makua. And we may be sure of one thing, that the European planter, whether in the north or the south, on the coast or in the interior, will not have a much easier time than these people. That, however, will do him no harm; on the contrary, the harder the struggle for existence, the more vigorous has been the development of a colony throughout the whole course of human history. The United States of to-day are the standing proof of this assertion; the South African colonies, now developing in a most satisfactory manner, speak no less clearly, and other cases in point might easily be adduced.
The waves are running higher, the König having more breadth of beam than depth, does not roll, but cannot help shipping more seas than she would like. Ought I, in face of this grand spectacle, to let myself be absorbed in useless forecasts of the future? My friend Hiram Rhodes’s taunt about “political childhood” was cruel—yet there was some truth in it, and not as regards the Zanzibar treaty only. We Germans have begun colonizing three hundred years later than other nations, and yet Dick, Tom and Harry are raising an outcry because our colonies, acquired fully twenty years ago, do not yet produce a surplus. The honest fellows think that “South-West” alone ought to be in a position to relieve them from the necessity of paying any taxes whatever. One could tear one’s hair at such folly and such utter lack of the historic sense. Most books are printed in Germany—none are bought, and but few read there. Among these few we can scarcely include any works on colonial history, otherwise it would be impossible that even colonial experts should know so little of those thousand conflicts, difficulties and reverses experienced to their cost by the English in India, in the South Seas, in Africa, and in America, and which over and over again might well have disgusted the Dutch, the Spaniards, and the Portuguese with their extensive colonial possessions. Unconsciously influenced by the wealth of England and the affluence of Holland, both in great part arising from their foreign possessions, we are apt to forget that three centuries are a period fifteen times as long as our own colonial era, and that at least ten generations of English and Dutch have won by hard, unceasing work what we expect to receive without effort on our part. I am firmly convinced that we shall never learn to appreciate our really splendid possessions till a more thorough system of instruction has supplied the want above referred to—doubly inexcusable in a nation whose intellectual pre-eminence is everywhere acknowledged.
Such historic sense is to be gained by putting two kinds of capital into the colonies—the blood shed for their preservation and development, and the hard cash spent on the utilization of their resources.
To illustrate the extent of the British Colonial Empire and its distribution throughout the world, it is often pointed out that the mother country is seldom without a colonial war of some kind. This is true in the present, and it has also been true in the past: England has in fact always had to fight for her dominions beyond sea. Undoubtedly, this three hundred years’ struggle for possession, which, under her special circumstances has often been for England a struggle for existence, is the principal ground for the peculiarly close and intimate relation between the mother country and the daughter states. Hardly a family but has dear ones buried in Indian or African soil. This fact at first attaches to the country a painful interest, which very soon gives rise to an interest of another sort. The truth of this doctrine has been illustrated in the saddest way for us by the sanguinary war in South Western Africa.
The other kind of capital—the monetary—cannot be discussed in the case of our colonies without touching on the railway question. What complaints have been made of the invincible reluctance of German capitalists to engage in colonial undertakings! I am not myself a wealthy man, but, if I had a million to lose, I should nevertheless hesitate before investing it in a country without means of communication, being entirely devoid of natural ones, while artificial ones are as yet only in the elementary stage. At home, every one is now expecting great things from the new driver of our colonial chariot. Herr Dernburg is a trained financier, and he, perhaps, can succeed where others have failed—in the completion of the great railway system projected long ago, and in procuring the no less necessary financial resources.
Lastly, the native is not without an important bearing on the future of our East African colony. As an ethnographer, I am in a better position to form an opinion about him than with respect to other questions, in which the outsider like myself has only common sense to guide him. The black man is pronounced by some, “an untrained child;” by others, “utterly depraved and incurably lazy.” There is yet a third party who are inclined to leave him at least one or two small virtues, but these are steadily shouted down. It is true that the native population of the Coast towns have a horror of any serious work, and look down on it as a lowering of themselves; but I think we may be permitted to entertain a better opinion as to the great mass of the people in German East Africa. The most numerous tribe in the whole colony are the Wanyamwezi, who are estimated at about four million souls, and occupy the whole central area east of the Great Rift Valley. No one has yet ventured to doubt their industry or their capacity for progress; they are excellent agriculturists, and at the same time they were, for a whole century, the mainstay of the caravan trade between the coast and the heart of the continent. Before long this traffic must in the nature of things cease, but we have no right to suppose that the Wanyamwezi will therefore become superfluous. A glance over the reports of the Uganda Railway will show us how fortunate we are in possessing such an element in the social structure as this vigorous tribe. Let us then be wise enough to encourage and develop this economic force for the native’s own benefit, and above all to get the full advantage of it ourselves. What is true of the Wanyamwezi is also true of many other tribes. Even now, I cannot forget the impression made on me by the high average of the farming which I saw among my friends in the Rovuma Valley. People who, however often they have been displaced, still cling so firmly to the soil, must certainly have great potentialities for good, or all the teachings of racial psychology and history are falsified. This unexpectedly high stage of culture can only be explained by an evolution extending over a period of incalculable length. There is nothing to disprove the great antiquity of agriculture among the Bantu; they are conservative, as their continent is conservative; the few alien elements still in the economic stage of the collector and hunter—the Bushmen in the most arid parts of the south, and the Pygmies in the most inaccessible forests of Central and West Africa—must have been crowded out by them many centuries ago.
The farming of our natives is done entirely with the hoe—that implement-of-all-work, with the heavy transverse blade which serves alike for breaking up and cleaning the ground, for sowing the crops, and, to a certain extent, for reaping them. We are too much inclined to think of this mode of cultivation as something primitive and inferior, and, in fact, in so far as it dispenses with domestic animals, whether for work or for the supply of manure, it is really very far behindhand. But we must also take into account that some parts of our colonies are infested with the tsetse-fly, and that the system of cultivating narrow strips of ground entirely with the hoe really marks a very high stage of farming. The best proof of this is the retention of the narrow bed in our gardens, where the cultivation can scarcely be said to be of a more elementary description than that of our fields. It is significant, too, that for the more intensive forms of culture when carried on in the open fields, e.g., flower-growing, as near Erfurt, Quedlinburg, Haarlem, etc., and market-gardening as in the neighbourhood of Brunswick, Hanover, Mainz, and other large towns, the long, narrow bed is most in favour. Moreover, it is difficult to see how the native could cope with the weeds—the principal danger to his crops—were it not that his narrow beds are easily reached from all sides.
The native mode of agriculture, therefore, need not be interfered with: it has been tested and found excellent.
Another question is, how shall we, on this basis, make our black fellow-subjects useful to ourselves? In my opinion, there are two ways, as to both of which the pros and cons are about equal. Both have been in operation for some time, so that we have a standard to guide us in forecasting the ultimate development of the whole colony. In the one, the native is not encouraged to advance in his own home and on his own holding, but is trained as a labourer on the plantation of a European master—plantations being laid out wherever suitable soil and tolerable climate promise a good return for outlay. The other method has the progress of the native himself in view, and aims at increasing his economic productivity by multiplying and improving the crops grown by him on his own account, teaching him new wants and at the same time increasing his purchasing power. In this way it is hoped that he will exchange his exports for ours.
The future must show whether the German people will decide for one of these ways to the exclusion of the other, or whether, as heretofore, both will be retained. For the mother country their value is about equal and depends on the degree of activity shown in colonial affairs as a whole. But the second is decidedly to the advantage of the native himself. As a plantation labourer he is and remains a mshenzi; as a peasant proprietor he is able to advance. At the same time we must not forget that our colonies were founded in the expectation of providing homes for our surplus population, and that if the native is to claim the most fertile parts of his own country for himself, nothing can come of that ver sacrum. It also depends on the general direction of our policy whether the numerical increase and physical improvement of the native are to our interest or not. Some primitive peoples have almost or entirely disappeared under the influence of civilization; the Tasmanians belong to history; the Maoris of New Zealand and the Kanakas of Hawaii are rapidly diminishing, and we have lately heard of the last Vedda in Ceylon. The negro race does not belong to these candidates for extinction; on the contrary, wherever it has come in contact with the white, it has grown stronger in every respect; there is therefore no fear of its dying out. But shall we go further and, by artificial selection, deliberately raise their coefficient of multiplication? Certainly we ought to do so, for a numerous resident population is under all circumstances a benefit to us. It solves the labour problem for the planter, and, on the other hand, the European manufacturer and merchant will, of course, prefer a large number of customers to a small one. How is this improvement to be initiated? I have nothing further to add to the remarks which, à propos of the various diseases and other scourges of this continent, occur in the preceding pages.
In Europe some people are stupid, others of moderate capacity, and yet others decidedly clever. The huge lip-ornaments of the Makonde and Makua women sometimes produce the impression of a simian type of face, and small boys occasionally suggest by their features a not remote kinship with the missing link, but this exhausts the list of excuses I could have alleged for looking down from a superior height on the people in question. In all the months spent among the natives of the Rovuma Valley, I never discovered any reason why we should, as we are so fond of doing, associate the idea of absurdity with the African. On the contrary, the behaviour, not only of the elders, but of the liveliest of the young people in their intercourse with Knudsen and myself, was characterized by a quiet dignity which might well have served as an example to many a European of similar social position. My personal experiences will not allow me to believe in the dogma of the negro’s incapacity for development. It cannot be denied that he has achieved a certain intellectual progress, even in North America, though the obstacles there are greater than the facilities. Why, therefore, should he not rise, as soon as the opportunity is offered to him in such a way that he can take advantage of it? Only we must not expect this advance to take place overnight, any more than we can expect a rapidity of economic progress at variance with every law of historical probability.
It is now quite dark; the boat must have changed her course, for the gale no longer meets us in front, but comes from the port side, so that no doubt we are approaching Crete. To-morrow, or the day after, we shall pass the coast of Greece. I must confess that I am looking forward to a sight of this country, though I do not regard its classic age with the same unbounded and uncritical enthusiasm as many of our countrymen, to whom the ancient Greek is the embodiment of all historical and cultural virtues. One thing only even the blackest envy cannot deny to the Hellenes of old—a courage in colonial enterprise which we should do well to imitate both now and in the future.
This future is still shrouded in mystery. Will our East African colony become a second India? I do not doubt for a moment that it will, and my mind’s eye sees the whole country traversed by railway lines. One of these follows the old caravan road from the coast to Tanganyika. The iron horse has superseded the old carrier-transport, and the clattering train now bears the carriers themselves, as well as bulky goods which could never have been put on the market under the old system. One line runs to the Victoria Nyanza and another to distant Nyasa; we are able to link up with the British network of railways in South Africa, with the communications of the Congo State, with the Nile Valley. Thirty years ago Stanley’s march to the Lake Region and his boat-voyage down the Congo were epoch-making achievements. We of to-day may perhaps live to make the trip by train de luxe from the Cape to Cairo, and from Dar es Salam to Kamerun.
Notes
1. It must also be added that the text has been handled somewhat freely, and many passages eliminated, not because they were in themselves objectionable, but because they added nothing important to the narrative, and fell intolerably flat in translation.
2. The first to recognise the importance of Dar es Salam harbour was Sayyid Majid, Sultan of Zanzibar, who determined to erect a residence there and divert the trade of the interior to it. The town was laid out on a large scale, and buildings begun, when the Sultan’s death in 1870 put an end to the operations. His successor, Sayyid Barghash, disliked the place, and the unfinished town was allowed to fall into ruins.—See the description in Thomson, To the Central African Lakes and Back, vol. i, pp. 71–75.—[Tr.]
3. Published in English as The World’s History (4 vols., London, 1901) with introduction by Professor Bryce.
4. This song is a mixture of Nyamwezi, Swahili and corrupt Arabic; the last three words being intended for Bismillahi yu (= he is) akbar.
5. “Discussion”—but it is an elastic term, corresponding in most if not all, of its many meanings to the Chinyanja mlandu, the Zulu indaba and the “palaver” of the West Coast.—[Tr.]
6. The U.M.C.A. (Universities’ Mission to Central Africa). Masasi Station was founded in 1876 by Bishop Steere and the Rev. W. P. Johnson (now Archdeacon of Nyasa).—[Tr.]
7. Canon Porter went out to Africa in 1880.
8. This is more intelligible if we remember the shape of the native razor, which is usually about five or six inches long, with the cutting end like a spatula and tapering back into a stalk-like handle, the end of which could easily be sharpened as an awl.
9. Mr. J. T. Last says that some of the Makua women, “in addition to the pelele, wear a brass or iron nail from four to seven inches in length... passed through a hole in the lower lip and left hanging in front of the chin. When a lady cannot afford a metal ornament of the sort, she utilizes a piece of stick which she covers with beads.”
10. This is not pure D natural, but a sound between D sharp and D natural, though nearer the latter.
11. Zur Oberflächengestaltung und Geologie Deutsch-Ostafrikas, Berlin, 1900.
12. Ancient and Modern Methods of Arrow Release.
13. “Off you go!”
14. Dr. Weule translates this as “He works for the European,” but it is more accurately rendered “Foreign work,” or “work in” (or “of”) “Europe”—or foreign countries generally.
15. This expression (Naturvölker) was adopted by F. Ratzel in preference to the vague and misleading term “savages.” It rests on the definition of civilization as a process whereby man renders himself, in an ever-increasing degree, independent of nature. The usual English equivalent, “primitive peoples,” is somewhat lacking in precision.—[Tr.]
16. 100 to the rupee.
17. Chingulungulu is a Yao word, meaning the turquoise blue beads which have always been a staple article of trade since the days of the ancient Egyptians.
18. The “phenomenon” can scarcely be considered surprising, in view of Dr. Weule’s previous remarks (see p. 52), and his subsequent confession of the difficulty he experienced in keeping his carriers out of mischief at Chingulungulu. It is not apparent from the narrative whether it occurred to him to inquire into their behaviour at Masasi. They need not be set down as reprobates beyond all other wapagazi. The carrier expects to work hard on the march, and to rest and enjoy himself with his family about him in his own village, also to have some sort of a spree, in reason, when paid off on the Coast, in the interval between two journeys. But a lengthened period of inaction, in the middle of a safari, and in a strange country, is something quite outside his scheme of life, and it is no wonder if he gets demoralized.
19. “Bad insects!”
20. A species of alcohol expressly designed for native consumption, and more especially as a present to chiefs and headmen. Dr. Weule refers to it again later on, but gives no particulars as to its chemical constitution.—[Tr.]
21. This is surely a mistake, unless the word “blush” is only to be used of turning red. Natives certainly change colour under stress of emotion.—[Tr.]
22. This must be taken with some reservations. Even in 1862, when Livingstone ascended the Rovuma for the first time, he repeatedly found villages deserted for fear of the slavers, whose main route from Kilwa to Nyasa crossed the Rovuma above Kichokomane. Matters seem to have become worse in this respect by 1866. See Livingstone’s Last Journals, Vol. I, pp. 24, 37, 39, 41 and elsewhere. The Mazitu (Wangoni) had already become a terror by the latter date. Ib., p. 43, etc.—[Tr.]
23. Joseph Thomson made the same remark with regard to the Mahenge somewhat further north.—See To the Central African Lakes and Back, Vol. I, p. 188.—[Tr.]
24. A well-known German humorist, one of the principal contributors to Fliegende Blätter.
25. This is the Matola who welcomed the U.M.C.A. missionaries to Newala, in 1877, and of whom the late Bishop Maples said: “He is without exception the most intelligent and the most pleasing African I know. He has many excellent qualities, and withal an amount of energy that is rare in that part of the world. He has a fund of information about the people, the country, and the languages, of which he can speak six.” Matola died at Newala in October, 1895.—[Tr.]
26. The accents are reproduced from Dr. Weule’s transcript. The accent never in Yao falls on the last syllable but sometimes, in singing, the accent appears to be displaced, or possibly the rising intonation has been confused with the accent.—[Tr.]
27. A subsequent passage in which almost the same description is given must be taken with the above as somewhat qualifying it. It must be admitted that Dr. Weule’s statements, as they stand here, are certainly misleading, and convey an exaggerated impression of universal neglect and misery among African babies. It is true that there is much to be done, by women missionaries and others, in the way of inculcating sound hygienic principles (though not more, perhaps, than in London!)—but the appalling state of things described is by no means universal, and it must be remembered that the tribes of the Makonde plateau had been harassed by slavers and hunted from place to place even beyond the wont of Africans in general.—[Tr.]
28. This crowing serpent is well known by hearsay throughout Nyasaland. It is said to have a red crest and to have “killed very many people in the Angoni country” (Scott’s Dictionary, s.v., Kasongo). The natives who told me about it had never seen it themselves, but had heard about it from hunters; they described its habit of darting down from trees, and added that the said hunters circumvented it by making the foremost man of the party carry a pot full of fire (others say very hot gruel or scalding bran-mash) on his head, into which the snake descends and perishes. The Anyanja say ingolira koh—“It cries koh!” (they render the sound of a cock’s crow as kokololiko). Mr. Richard Crawshay assured me that the songo was a real and not a mythical snake; he had killed one—but it had no red crest, and he had not heard its voice. The late Bishop Maples, however, did, on one occasion, hear a “large snake with a serrated comb” crow like a cock while travelling between Masasi and the Rovuma in 1877.—[Tr.]
29. Apparently the same word as the Chinyanja chindapi, meaning either a proverb, a short story, or a riddle. The Rev. H. B. Barnes says that in a “riddle contest” the propounder of the enigma says “Chindapi!” and the rest of the company “Chijija” (let it come!) Similar formulas appear to be in use throughout Bantu Africa.—[Tr.]
30. Both words mean “this,” but are of different classes. “Ichi, ichi” (this, this), is a similar riddle recorded at Blantyre, to which the answer is “a shadow.” In fact, I am indebted to Dr. Weule for the explanation, having (no doubt through failing to notice the accompanying gestures) abandoned it as a hopeless puzzle.—[Tr.]
31. This riddle also I obtained at Blantyre, in the Chinyanja language, but from a Yao girl, thus: “Ambuye naona alikwenda m’njira natenga ufa” (“I saw my master walking on the road and he was carrying flour”).—[Tr.]
32. This is given, in a slightly different form, in Bishop Steere’s Collections for a Handbook of the Yao language (p. 105): “Apitako tusimanako” (“Where they pass, where we meet”).—[Tr.]
32a. This form shows that the name is really Nsulila, though the n is often not heard, and may be really dropped, in speaking.—[Tr.]
33. This is not necessarily implied by the use of Che or Ku. Every Yao uses these prefixes of himself and his neighbours; even small children are Kuluponje or Chendilijika, etc.—[Tr.]
34. One would expect chilwele chachijinji, but possibly there is some mistake in transcription.—[Tr.]
35. The old custom of the Yaos (at any rate in the case of a chief) is to bury the dead man inside his hut (or where he has several, in that of his principal wife), which is then closed, and allowed to decay. Lengths of calico (the quantity being proportioned to the wealth of the deceased) are draped over the roof and left there. Perhaps the building of a house over the grave, which appears to be done sometimes near Lake Nyasa, is a later modification of this custom.—[Tr.]
36. Die Herabkunft des Feuers und des Göttertrankes. Ein Beitrag zur vergleichenden Mythologie der Indo-Germanen. Berlin, 1859.
37. To prevent complications, this prohibition applies to friendly tribes as well as to the late rebels.
38. See Last Journals, vol. i, chapters i-iii.—[Tr.]
39. Query “a hoe”? The shovel is not a native implement.—[Tr.]
40. More correctly in Yao, Jua Michila = “(he) of the tails.” The Rev. Duff Macdonald says that he is called “the rattler of the tails,” juakuchimula michila. Tails of animals are supposed to have great efficacy in magic, and usually belong to a witch-doctor’s outfit, either forming part of his costume or carried in his hand.—[Tr.]
41. The Makua word corresponding to ngoma.—[Tr.]
42. This Nyanja word, here used for convenience sake, means the “village green,” or “forum,” where the affairs of the community are discussed, and all public transactions take place.—[Tr.]
43. This action is called ku luluta both in Yao and in Nyanja. The Rev. H. B. Barnes explains the word, in the latter language, as “to say lu-lu-lu-lu indefinitely. The women do this as a sign of rejoicing; the sound is produced by moving the tongue quickly from side to side with the mouth a little open, and very often the hand is alternately clapped to the lips and taken away rapidly.” The cry itself is called in Nyanja ntungululu. It seems to be universal (under various names) among African women.—[Tr.]
44. Surely this name, if not the figure itself, must be of Muslim origin?—[Tr.]
45. Called in Chinganja chitedzi; it is the plant known as “cowage.”—[Tr.]
46. These are a small kind of turnip, the size of a large radish, grown at and near Teltow, a Prussian town on the line between Berlin and Potsdam.—[Tr.]
47. The Persians who had settled at Lamu in the tenth century.—[Tr.]
48. It has sometimes been thought that the Ma in “Makua” and “Makonde” is a prefix, as in “Matabele,” “Mashona,” etc. It appears, however, to be an integral part of the word, and the correct plural is therefore Wamakua, Wamakonde.—[Tr.]
49. The author seems to have overlooked the fact that the “short, woolly crop” is the result of regular shaving. The shock heads of, e.g., the Alolo (Alomwe) or other “bush people” strike the eye at once among the Yaos or Anyanja, and these people (who are a branch of the Makua) frequently wear the hair twisted into long strings. The sentence about washing, as it stands, is somewhat too sweeping. It only applies to districts where water is scarce—as, indeed, appears from other passages in the book.—[Tr.]
50. “This kind of lock and key,” says the late Rev. D. C. Scott (Cyclopædic Dictionary of the Mang’anja Language, s.v., mfungulo), “is common among the Ambo branch of the Mang’anja” (living between the Ruo junction and the sea), “and is a wooden key about a foot long, with three teeth; it is passed in between the wall-post and upright door-stick (kapambi) inside, and the teeth fit into notches and lift the bolts; only the Ambo can make them and they lock their door thus behind them, carrying the key with them when they go to any short distance from their house.” (See also svv. Funga and Mtengo: “mitengo ya Ambo, the Ambos’ stick keys.”) The ordinary method of fastening the door (chitseko) is by cross-bars, slipped in between the door and the side posts. The following passage from Mr. Charles Doughty’s Travels in Arabia Deserta seems to show that this Ambo form of lock and key must have been borrowed, directly or indirectly, from the Arab settlers on the coast—doubtless at a remote period, as it seems to be no longer in use among the latter. “The fastening, as in all Arabic places, is a wooden lock; the bolt is detained by little pegs falling from above into apposite holes, the key is a wooden stele, some have them of metal, with teeth to match the holes of the lock, the key put in under, you strike up the pegs and the slot may be withdrawn” (Vol. I, p. 143).—[Tr.]
51. Both Yaos and Anyanja carry sheath-knives, either stuck in the waist-cloth or hung to a cross-belt passing over the right shoulder, or (if of small size) on a string round the neck or left arm.—[Tr.]
52. The reference is to p. 315 where the chimbandi ceremony (observed when a young wife is expecting her first child) is described. Dr. Weule does not mention the fact of bark-cloth being worn by the girls at the unyago mysteries he has previously described—indeed, he says expressly that, at Nuchi (p. 231, and apparently also at Akuchikomu’s, p. 222) they were dressed in new, bright-coloured calicoes. But he appears to have witnessed only the closing ceremony. Usually, if not always, bark-cloth is worn during the weeks spent in the bush. This was certainly the case among the Yaos of the Shire Highlands, fourteen or fifteen years ago, and probably is so still. “The unyago [at one of the Ndirande villages near Blantyre] was just over, and [two of the missionaries] met the girls coming away from it all freshly anointed and dripping with oil. They found the masasa (booths or huts) built round three sides of a square, divided into little compartments, where the girls sleep. They are not allowed outside the place till the thing is over, and they wear bark-cloth. In the middle of the square were traces of pots having been made, and ufa (flour) pounded.... The girls go through symbolic performances of all their married duties,—pretend to sow maize, hoe it, gather it, bring it home, etc.—pounding, sweeping, fetching water, cooking, making pots, etc., are all gone through.”—(MS. note, September 26th and 27th, 1894.)—[Tr.]
53. A native is not likely to tell a stranger, above all a European, the names by which he is known at home. The name by which he is known to his employer is therefore most probably a nickname, or one assumed by himself for the occasion.—[Tr.]
54. It is not always easy to draw the line between games and dances; but there is certainly no lack of the former. Particulars of games played by a number of children are given in Scott, Cyclopædic Dictionary of the Mang’anja Language, s.vv. Masewero and Sewera.—[Tr.]
55. In Chinyanja, Nguli or Nanguli.—[Tr.]
56. This is evidently the one called Nsikwa in Chinyanja. See Scott, Cyclopædic Dictionary of the Mang’anja Language, p. 465: “A small top made of a round piece of gourd-shell with a spindle of cane through the middle.” A game is played with the Nsikwa in which the players take sides, and spin their tops so as to knock down bits of maize-cob set up by their adversaries.—[Tr.]
57. The articles figured look like bull-roarers, which no doubt might be put to the use indicated, by a native who had seen the telephone at Lindi. But we take leave to doubt their being originally made for such a purpose.—Tr.
58. The Rev. Dr. Hetherwick says that masange is “a game played by children in which they build mimic houses and act as grown-up people.” [Tr.]
59. The author seems to be mistaken in the distinction drawn between the ngosyo and the “groups.” See note at end of chapter. [Tr.]
60. Miraji, plural of mlaji, a form interchangeable with mlasi. [Tr.]
61. Rice in Makua is mvuka or moka; the word in the text may be a corrupt form intermediate between this and the Yao mpunga.
62. See, inter alia, Mr. R. T. Dennett’s At the Back of the Black Man’s Mind, pp. 38, 68–70. [Tr.]
63. The same thing is done by Mang’anja girls on the Shire, in order to make them articulate clearly. The pebbles used for the purpose are taken from the stomachs of crocodiles, which sometimes contain enough to fill a bucket. (MS. note made at Blantyre, August 30th, 1894.)—[Tr.]
64. See note at end of chapter.—[Tr.]
65. The latter spelling is intended to represent the Makua version of the English pronunciation of Anastasius.—[Tr.]
66. Discovered by Consul O’Neill in 1882.—[Tr.]
67. The late Dr. Elmslie computed that this crossing must have taken place in 1825, as Ngoni tradition states that an eclipse (during which the chief Mombera, who died in 1892, was prematurely born) occurred at the time.—[Tr.]
68. This may be a mistake for chikolongwe, which is the correct form of the word in Yao—or it may be a Makonde word. Chitopole, in Yao (see Dr. Hetherwick’s Handbook) means “the crescent-shaped tribal mark of the Walomwe” (a division of the Makua). This is quite sufficiently like the curved spring of the trap in the illustration on p. 98, if the latter were turned round with the opening downwards. Probably the Yaos only know the word as applied to the keloid pattern, having learned it from the Makua, in whose language no doubt it originally had the sense attributed to it by Dr. Weule.—[Tr.]
69. We cannot help thinking that Dr. Weule must be mistaken in supposing this game to be borrowed from a European source. The late Commander Cameron, at Kasongo in 1874, saw a slave of the Arab, Juma Merikani, “exhibiting tricks... with a piece of heavy, hard wood shaped like an hour-glass, and two sticks each a foot in length. Taking a stick in each hand, he could make the wood rotate rapidly and run backwards and forwards... between the sticks, on a piece of string attached to their ends; then, by a peculiar jerk, he would send the wood flying up into the air, higher than a cricket-ball could be thrown, and catching it on the string, would again set it rolling” (Across Africa, II, 91). At this time, diabolo, of course, was quite unknown in Europe, though it had been a fashionable game in the early part of last century. A writer in the Bulletin de la Société Belge des Etudes Coloniales (December, 1908), in a notice of Dr. Weule’s book, after quoting the above passage from Cameron, refers to a description of the game (under the name of Le Diable), from a work entitled Les Amusements de la Campagne (Paris, 1826). It was believed to have originated in China.—[Tr.]
70. This was probably not accidental, as the Wayao always bury their dead with the knees drawn up. See Macdonald, Africana, i, 103.—[Tr.]
Re-indexed footnotes using numbers and collected together at the end of the last chapter.