Part 1
# The Lake Regions of Central Africa: A Picture of Exploration, Vol. 2 ### By Burton, Richard Francis, Sir
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Transcriber’s Notes
Text printed in italics has been transcribed _between underscores_, bold face text =between equal signs=. Small capitals have been changed to ALL CAPITALS. Superscript text is represented by ^{text}.
More Transcriber’s Notes may be found at the end of this text.
THE LAKE REGIONS OF CENTRAL AFRICA
VOL II.
LONDON PRINTED BY SPOTTISWOODE AND CO. NEW-STREET SQUARE
[Illustration: NAVIGATION OF THE TANGANYIKA LAKE.]
THE LAKE REGIONS OF CENTRAL AFRICA
A PICTURE OF EXPLORATION
BY
RICHARD F. BURTON Capt. H. M. I. Army: Fellow and Gold Medallist of the Royal Geographical Society
“_Some to discover islands far away_”--_Shakspere_
IN TWO VOLUMES
VOL. II.
LONDON LONGMAN, GREEN, LONGMAN, AND ROBERTS 1860
_The right of translation is reserved_
CONTENTS OF THE SECOND VOLUME.
Page
## CHAPTER XII.
The Geography and Ethnology of Unyamwezi.--The Fourth Region 1
CHAP. XIII. At length we sight the Lake Tanganyika, the “Sea of Ujiji.” 34
CHAP. XIV. We explore the Tanganyika Lake 80
CHAP. XV. The Tanganyika Lake and its Periplus 134
CHAP. XVI. We return to Unyanyembe 155
CHAP. XVII. The Down-march to the Coast 223
CHAP. XVIII. Village Life in East Africa 278
CHAP. XIX. The Character and Religion of the East Africans; their Government, and Slavery 324
Conclusion 379
APPENDICES. APPENDIX I.: Commerce, Imports, and Exports 387 APPENDIX II.: Official Correspondence 420
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS IN THE SECOND VOLUME.
CHROMOXYLOGRAPHS.
Navigation of the Tanganyika Lake _Frontispiece._ View in Usagara _to face page_ 1 Snay bin Amir’s House „ 155 Saydumi, a native of Uganda „ 223 The Basin of Maroro „ 255 The Basin of Kisanga „ 278 Map of the Routes between Zanzibar and the Great Lakes in Eastern Africa in 1857, 1858 & 1859, by R. F. Burton
WOODCUTS.
Iwanza, or public-houses; with Looms to the left 1 My Tembe near the Tangangika 34 Head Dresses of Wanyamwezi 80 African heads, and Ferry-boat 134 Portraits of Muinyi Kidogo, the Kirangozi, the Mganga, &c. 155 Mgongo Thembo, or the Elephant’s Back 223 Jiwe la Mkoa, the Round Rock 242 Rufita Pass in Usagara 259 The Ivory Porter, the Cloth Porter, and Woman in Usagara 278 Gourd, Stool, Bellows, Guitar, and Drum 292 Gourds 313 A Mnyamwezi and a Mheha 324 The Bull-headed Mabruki, and the African standing position 378 The Elephant Rock 384
[Illustration: VIEW IN USAGARA.]
THE LAKE REGIONS OF CENTRAL AFRICA.
[Illustration: A village interior in the Land of the Moon.
Utanta or loom.
Iwanza, or public houses.]
## CHAPTER XII.
THE GEOGRAPHY AND ETHNOLOGY OF UNYAMWEZI.--THE FOURTH REGION.
The fourth division is a hilly table-land, extending from the western skirts of the desert Mgunda Mk’hali, in E. long. 33° 57′, to the eastern banks of the Malagarazi River, in E. long. 31° 10′: it thus stretches diagonally over 155 rectilinear geographical miles. Bounded on the north by Usui and the Nyanza Lake, to the south-eastwards by Ugala, southwards by Ukimbu, and south-westwards by Uwende, it has a depth of from twenty-five to thirty marches. Native caravans, if lightly laden, can accomplish it in twenty-five days, including four halts. The maximum altitude observed by B. P. therm. was 4050 feet, the minimum 2850. This region contains the two great divisions of Unyamwezi and Uvinza.
The name of Unyamwezi was first heard by the Portuguese, according to Giovanni Botero, towards the end of the sixteenth century, or about 1589. Pigafetta, who, in 1591, systematised the discoveries of the earlier Portuguese, placed the empire of “Monemugi” or Munimigi in a vast triangular area, whose limits were Monomotapa, Congo, and Abyssinia: from his pages it appears that the people of this central kingdom were closely connected by commerce with the towns on the eastern coast of Africa. According to Dapper, the Dutch historian, (1671,) whose work has been the great mine of information to subsequent writers upon Africa south of the equator, about sixty days’ journey from the Atlantic is the kingdom of Monemugi, which others call “Nimeamaye,” a name still retained under the corrupted form “Nimeaye” in our atlases. M. Malte-Brun, senior, mentioning Mounemugi, adds, “ou, selon une autographe plus authentique, _Mou-nimougi_.” All the Portuguese authors call the people Monemugi or Mono-emugi; Mr. Cooley prefers Monomoezi, which he derives from “Munha Munge,” or “lord of the world,” the title of a great African king in the interior, commemorated by the historian De Barros. Mr. Macqueen (‘Geography of Central Africa’), who also gives Manmoise, declares that “Mueno-muge, Mueno-muize, Monomoise, and Uniamese,” relate to the same place and people, comprehending a large extent of country in the interior of Africa: he explains the word erroneously to mean the “great Moises or Movisas.” The Rev. Mr. Erhardt asserts that for facility of pronunciation the coast merchants have turned the name “Wanamesi” into “Waniamesi,” which also leads his readers into error. The Rev. Mr. Livingstone thus endorses the mistake of Messrs. Macqueen and Erhardt: “The names Monomoizes, spelt also Monemuigis and Monomuizes, and Monomotapistas, when applied to the tribes, are exactly the same as if we should call the Scotch the Lord Douglases.... Monomoizes was formed from Moiza or Muiza, the singular of the word Babisa or Aiza, the proper name of a large tribe to the north.” In these sentences there is a confusion between the lands of the Wanyamwezi, lying under the parallel of the Tanganyika Lake, and the Wabisa (in the singular Mbísá, the Wavisa of the Rev. Mr. Rebmann), a well-known commercial tribe dwelling about the Maravi or Nyassa Lake, S.W. of Kilwa, whose name in times of old was corrupted by the Portuguese to Movizas or Movisas. Finally M. Guillain, in a work already alluded to, states correctly the name of the people to be Oua-nyamouczi, but in designating the country “pays de Nyamouezi,” he shows little knowledge of the Zangian dialects. M. V. A. Malte-Brun, junior (‘Bulletin de Géographie,’ Paris, 1856, Part II. p. 295) correctly writes Wanyamwezi.
A name so discrepantly corrupted deserves some notice. Unyamwezi is translated by Dr. Krapf and the Rev. Mr. Rebmann, “Possessions of the Moon.” The initial U, the causal and locative prefix, denotes the land, nya, of, and mwezi, articulated m’ezí with semi-elision of the w, means the moon. The people sometimes pronounce their country name Unyamiezi, which would be a plural form, miezi signifying moons or months. The Arabs and the people of Zanzibar, for facility and rapidity of pronunciation, dispense with the initial dissyllable, and call the country and its race Mwezi. The correct designation of the inhabitants of Unyamwezi is, therefore, Mnyamwezi in the singular, and Wanyamwezi in the plural: Kinyamwezi is the adjectival form. It is not a little curious that the Greeks should have placed their της σεληνης ορος--the mountain of the moon--and the Hindus their Soma Giri (an expression probably translated from the former), in the vicinity of the African “Land of the Moon.” It is impossible to investigate the antiquity of the vernacular term; all that can be discovered is, that nearly 350 years ago the Portuguese explorers of Western Africa heard the country designated by its present name.
There is the evidence of barbarous tradition for a belief in the existence of Unyamwezi as a great empire, united under a single despot. The elders declare that their patriarchal ancestor became after death the first tree, and afforded shade to his children and descendants. According to the Arabs the people still perform pilgrimage to a holy tree, and believe that the penalty of sacrilege in cutting off a twig would be visited by sudden and mysterious death. All agree in relating that during the olden time Unyamwezi was united under a single sovereign, whose tribe was the Wakalaganza, still inhabiting the western district, Usagozi. According to the people, whose greatest chronical measure is a Masika, or rainy season, in the days of the grandfathers of their grandfathers the last of the Wanyamwezi emperors died. His children and nobles divided and dismembered his dominions, further
## partitions ensued, and finally the old empire fell into the hands of a
rabble of petty chiefs. Their wild computation would point to an epoch of 150 years ago--a date by no means improbable.
These glimmerings of light thrown by African tradition illustrate the accounts given by the early Portuguese concerning the extent and the civilisation of the Unyamwezi empire. Moreover, African travellers in the seventeenth century concur in asserting that, between 250 and 300 years ago, there was an outpouring of the barbarians from the heart of Æthiopia and from the shores of the Central Lake towards the eastern and southern coasts of the peninsula, a general waving and wandering of tribes which caused great ethnological and geographical confusion, public demoralisation, dismemberment of races, and change, confusion, and corruption of tongues. About this period it is supposed the kingdom of Mtándá, the first Kazembe, was established. The Kafirs of the Cape also date their migration from the northern regions to the banks of the Kei about a century and a half ago.
In these days Unyamwezi has returned to the political status of Eastern Africa in the time of the Periplus. It is broken up into petty divisions, each ruled by its own tyrant; his authority never extends beyond five marches; moreover, the minor chiefs of the different districts are virtually independent of their suzerains. One language is spoken throughout the land of the Moon, but the dialectic differences are such that the tribes in the east with difficulty understand their brethren in the west. The principal provinces are--Utakama to the extreme north, Usukuma on the south,--in Kinyamwezi sukuma means the north, takama the south, kiya the east, and mwere the west,--Unyanyembe in the centre, Ufyoma and Utumbara in the north-west, Unyangwira in the south-east, Usagozi and Usumbwá to the westward. The three normal divisions of the people are into Wanyamwezi, Wasukuma or northern, and Watakama or southern.
The general character of Unyamwezi is rolling ground, intersected with low conical and tabular hills, whose lines ramify in all directions. No mountain is found in the country. The superjacent stratum is clay, overlying the sandstone based upon various granites, which in some places crop out, picturesquely disposed in blocks and boulders and huge domes and lumpy masses; ironstone is met with at a depth varying from five to twelve feet, and at Kazeh, the Arab settlement in Unyanyembe, bits of coarse ore were found by digging not more than four feet in a chance spot. During the rains a coat of many-tinted greens conceals the soil; in the dry season the land is grey, lighted up by golden stubbles and dotted with wind-distorted trees, shallow swamps of emerald grass, and wide sheets of dark mud. Dwarfed stumps and charred “black-jacks” deform the fields, which are sometimes ditched or hedged in, whilst a thin forest of parachute-shaped thorns diversifies the waves of rolling land and earth-hills spotted with sun-burnt stone. The reclaimed tracts and clearings are divided from one another by strips of primæval jungle, varying from two to twelve miles in length. As in most parts of Eastern Africa, the country is dotted with “fairy mounts”--dwarf mounds, the ancient sites of trees now crumbled to dust, and the débris of insect architecture; they appear to be rich ground, as they are always diligently cultivated. The yield of the soil, according to the Arabs, averages sixty-fold, even in unfavourable seasons.
The Land of the Moon, which is the garden of Central Intertropical Africa, presents an aspect of peaceful rural beauty which soothes the eye like a medicine after the red glare of barren Ugogo, and the dark monotonous verdure of the western provinces. The inhabitants are comparatively numerous in the villages, which rise at short intervals above their impervious walls of the lustrous green milk-bush, with its coral-shaped arms, variegating the well-hoed plains; whilst in the pasture-lands frequent herds of many-coloured cattle, plump, round-barrelled, and high-humped, like the Indian breeds, and mingled flocks of goats and sheep dispersed over the landscape, suggest ideas of barbarous comfort and plenty. There are few scenes more soft and soothing than a view of Unyamwezi in the balmy evenings of spring. As the large yellow sun nears the horizon, a deep stillness falls upon earth: even the zephyr seems to lose the power of rustling the lightest leaf. The milky haze of midday disappears from the firmament, the flush of departing day mantles the distant features of scenery with a lovely rose-tint, and the twilight is an orange glow that burns like distant horizontal fires, passing upwards through an imperceptibly graduated scale of colours--saffron, yellow, tender green, and the lightest azure--into the dark blue of the infinite space above. The charm of the hour seems to affect even the unimaginative Africans, as they sit in the central spaces of their villages, or, stretched under the forest-trees, gaze upon the glories around.
In Unyamwezi water generally lies upon the surface, during the rains, in broad shallow pools, which become favourite sites for rice-fields. These little ziwa and mbuga--ponds and marshes--vary from two to five feet below the level of the land; in the dry season they are betrayed from afar by a green line of livelier vegetation streaking the dead tawny plain. The Arabs seldom dig their wells deeper than six feet, and they complain of the want of “live-water” gushing from the rocky ground, as in their native Oman. The country contains few springs, and the surface of retentive clay prevents the moisture penetrating to the subsoil. The peculiarity of the produce is its decided chalybeate flavour. The versant of the country varies. The eastern third, falling to the south-east, discharges its surplus supplies through the Rwaha river into the Indian Ocean; in the centre, water seems to stagnate; and in the western third, the flow, turning to the north and north-west, is carried by the Gombe nullah--a string of pools during the dry season, and a rapid unfordable stream during the rains--into the great Malagarazi river, the principal eastern influent of the Tanganyika Lake. The levels of the country and the direction of the waters combine to prove that the great depression of Central Africa, alluded to in the preceding chapter, commences in the district of Kigwa in Unyamwezi.
The climate of the island and coast of Zanzibar has, it must be remembered, double seasons, which are exceedingly confused and irregular. The lands of Unyamwezi and Uvinza, on the other hand, are as remarkable for simplicity of division. There eight seasons disturb the idea of year; here but two--a summer and a winter. Central Africa has, as the Spaniards say of the Philippine Isles,
“Seis mezes de polvo, Seis mezes de lodo.”
In 1857 the Masika, or rains, commenced throughout Eastern Unyamwezi on the 14th of November. In the northern and western provinces the wet monsoon begins earlier and lasts longer. At Msene it precedes Unyanyembe about a month; in Ujiji, Karagwah, and Uganda, nearly two months. Thus the latter countries have a rainy season which lasts from the middle of September till the middle of May.
The moisture-bearing wind in this part of Africa is the fixed south-east trade, deflected, as in the great valley of the Mississippi and in the island of Ceylon, into a periodical south-west monsoon. As will appear in these pages, the downfalls begin earlier in Central Africa than upon the eastern coast, and from the latter point they travel by slow degrees, with the northing sun, to the north-east, till they find a grave upon the rocky slopes of the Himalayas.
The rainy monsoon is here ushered in, accompanied, and terminated by storms of thunder and lightning, and occasional hail-falls. The blinding flashes of white, yellow, or rose colour play over the firmament uninterruptedly for hours, during which no darkness is visible. In the lighter storms thirty and thirty-five flashes may be counted in a minute: so vivid is the glare that it discloses the finest shades of colour, and appears followed by a thick and palpable gloom, such as would hang before a blind man’s eyes, whilst a deafening roar simultaneously following the flash, seems to travel, as it were, to and fro overhead. Several claps sometimes sound almost at the same moment, and as if coming from different directions. The same storm will, after the most violent of its discharges, pass over, and be immediately followed by a second, showing the superabundance of electricity in the atmosphere. When hail is about to fall, a rushing noise is heard in the air, with sudden coolness and a strange darkness from the canopy of brownish purple clouds. The winds are exceedingly variable: perhaps they are most often from the east and north-east during summer, from the north-west and south-west in the rains; but they are answered from all quarters of the heavens, and the most violent storms sail up against the lower atmospheric currents. The Portuguese of the Mozambique attribute these terrible discharges of electricity to the quantity of mineral substances scattered about the country; but a steaming land like Eastern Africa wants, during the rains, no stronger battery. In the rainy season the sensation is that experienced during the equinoctial gales in the Mediterranean, where the scirocco diffuses everywhere discomfort and disease. The fall is not, as in Western India, a steady downpour, lasting sometimes two or three days without a break. In Central Africa, rain seldom endures beyond twelve hours, and it often assumes for weeks an appearance of regularity, re-occurring at a certain time. Night is its normal season; the mornings are often wet, and the torrid midday is generally dry. As in Southern Africa, a considerable decrease of temperature is the consequence of long-continued rain. Westward of Unyanyembe, hail-storms, during the rainy monsoon, are frequent and violent; according to the Arabs, the stones sometimes rival pigeons’ eggs in size. Throughout this monsoon the sun burns with sickly depressing rays, which make earth reek like a garment hung out to dry. Yet this is not considered the unhealthy period: the inundation is too deep, and evaporation is yet unable to extract sufficient poison from decay.
As in India and the southern regions of Africa, the deadly season follows the wet monsoon from the middle of May to the end of June. The kosi or south-west wind gives place to the kaskazi, or north-east, about April, a little later than at Zanzibar. The cold gales and the fervid suns then affect the outspread waters; the rivers, having swollen during the weeks of violent downfall that usher in the end of the rains, begin to shrink, and miry morasses and swamps of black vegetable mud line the low-lands whose central depths are still under water. The winds, cooled by excessive evaporation and set in motion by the heat, howl over the country by night and day, dispersing through the population colds and catarrhs, agues and rheumatisms, dysenteries and deadly fevers. It must, however, be remarked that many cases which in India and Sindh would be despaired of, survived in Eastern Africa.
The hot season, or summer, lasting from the end of June till nearly the middle of November, forms the complement of the year. The air now becomes healthy and temperate; the cold, raw winds rarely blow, and the people recover from their transition diseases. At long intervals, during these months, but a few grateful and refreshing showers, accompanied by low thunderings, cool the air and give life to the earth. These phenomena are expected after the change of the moon, and not, as in Zanzibar, during her last quarter. The Arabs declare that here, as in the island, rain sometimes falls from a clear sky--a phenomenon not unknown to African travellers. The drought affects the country severely, a curious exception to the rule in the zone of perpetual rain; and after August whirlwinds of dust become frequent. At this time the climate is most agreeable to the senses; even in the hottest nights a blanket is welcome, especially about dawn, and it is possible to dine at 3 or 4 P.M., when in India the exertion would be impracticable. During the day a ring-cloud, or a screen of vapour, almost invariably tempers the solar rays; at night a halo, or a corona, generally encircles the moon. The clouds are chiefly cumulus, cumulo-stratus, and nimbus; the sky is often overcast with large white masses floating, apparently without motion, upon the milky haze, and in the serenest weather a few threads are seen pencilled upon the expanse above. Sunrise is seldom thoroughly clear, and, when so, the clouds, sublimed in other regions and brought up by the rising winds, begin to gather in the forenoon. They are melted, as it were, by the fervent heat of the sun between noon and 3 P.M., at which time also the breezes fall light. Thick mists collect about sunset, and by night the skies are seldom free from clouds. The want of heat to dilate the atmosphere at this season, and the light-absorbing vegetation which clothes the land, causes a peculiar dimness in the Galaxy and “Magellan’s Clouds.” The twilight also is short, and the zodiacal light is not observed. The suffocating sensation of the tropics is unknown, and at noon in the month of September--the midsummer of this region--the thermometer, defended from the wind, in a single-fold Arab tent, never exceeded 113° Fahr. Except during the rains, the dews are not heavy, as in Zanzibar, in the alluvial valleys, and in Usagara and Ujiji: the people do not fear exposure to them, though, as in parts of France, they consider dew-wetted grass unwholesome for cattle. The Arabs stand bathing in the occasional torrents of rain without the least apprehension. The temperature varies too little for the European constitution, which requires a winter. The people, however, scarcely care to clothe themselves. The flies and mosquitoes--those pests of most African countries--are here a minor annoyance.