Part 25

Fearing the action of the wind upon such light shafts if unfledged, the archer inserts into the cloven end three or four feathers, the cockfeather being as in Europe perpendicular when the arrow is nocked. The pile or iron head is curiously and cruelly barbed with long waving tails; the neck is toothed and edged by dinting the iron when hot with an axe, and it is sometimes half-sawed that it may break before extraction. The East Africans also have forkers or two-headed shafts, and bird-bolts or blunt arrows tipped with some hard wood, used when the weapon is likely to be lost. Before loosing an arrow the archer throws into the air a pinch of dust, not to find out the wind, but for good luck, like the Tartars of Tibet before discharging their guns. In battle the heavy-armed man holds his spear and a sheaf of spare arrows in the bow-hand, whilst a quiver slung to the left side contains reserve missiles, and a little axe stuck in the right side of the girdle is ready when the rest fail. The ronga or quiver is a bark-case, neatly cut and stained. It is of two forms, full-length, and provided with a cover for poisoned, and half-length for unpoisoned, arrows.

The rungu or knobkerry is the African club or mace; it extends from the Cape to the negroid and the Somal tribes north of the equator. The shape varies in almost every district: the head is long or round, oval or irregular, and sometimes provided on one side with an edge; it is cut out of the hardest wood, and generally from one piece. In some cases the knob is added to the handle, and in others it is supplied with a spear-head. The handle is generally two feet long, and it is cut thin enough to make the weapon top-heavy. The Mnyamwezi is rarely seen abroad without this weapon; he uses it in the chase, and in battle against the archer: he seems to trust it in close quarters rather than the feather-weight arrow or the spear that bends like gutta-percha, and most murders are committed with it. The East people do not, like the Kafirs, use the handle of the knobkerry as a dibble.

The sime or dudgeon is the makeshift for the Arab jambiyah and the Persian khanjar. The form of this weapon differs in almost every tribe. The Wahumba or Wamasai use blades about four feet long by two fingers in breadth; the long, round, and guardless hilt is ribbed for security of grasp, and covered with leather; their iron is of excellent quality, and the shape of the weapon has given rise to the report that “they make swords on the model of those of the Knights Templars.” The Wazegura and the Wagogo use knives not unlike the poniard of the Somal. In some tribes it is 3·5 feet long, with a leathern sheath extending half-way up the blade. Generally it is about half that size, straight, pointed, and double-edged, or jagged with teeth. The regions about the Lake manufacture and export great numbers of these weapons varying from a finger’s length to full dimensions.

The shoka or battle-axe is much used by the tribes around the Tanganyika. It has a blade of triangular shape, somewhat longer and thinner than that used as a working tool, which is passed through the bulging head of a short handle cut out of the bauhinia or some other hard tree. Amongst the Wasagara the peculiar mundu or bill often serves for the same purpose.

The targes of the Wasagara and the Wanyamwezi have already been described; the Wavinza make a shield of basket-work six feet by two, and much resembling that of the southern Kafirs, and the Wa’ungu carry large pavoises of bull’s hide. It is probable that the exceeding humidity of the climate, so ruinous to leather, prevents the general adoption of the shield; on the march it is merely an encumbrance, and the warrior must carry it on his head beyond the reach of the dewy grass.

The maritime races, the Wazegura, and others opposite the island of Zanzibar, have imprudently been allowed to purchase fire-arms, which they employ in obstructing caravans and in kidnapping-commandos against their weaker neighbours. A single German house has, it is said, sold off 13,000 Tower muskets in one year. The arms now preferred are those exported by Hamburg and America; they fetch 4 dollars each; the French single-barrel is somewhat cheaper, averaging 3 dollars 50 cents. In the interior fire-arms are still fortunately rare--the Arabs are too wise to arm the barbarians against themselves. In Unyamwezi an old gun is a present for a chief, and the most powerful rulers seldom can boast of more than three. Gunpowder is imported from Zanzibar in kegs of 10 and 25 lbs., bearing the American mark; it is of the description used in blasting, and fouls the piece after a few discharges. The price varies at Zanzibar from 3 dollars 50 cents to 7 dollars, and upon the coast from 5 to 10 dollars per small keg; in Unyamwezi ammunition is exchanged for ivory and slaves, and some Arab merchants keep as many as thirty kegs in the house, which they retail to factors and traders at the rate of 1 to 2 shukkahs per lb.

Swords in East Africa are used only by strangers. The Wasawahili and the slave-factors prefer the kittareh, a curved sabre made in Oman and Hazramaut, or, in its stead, an old German cavalry-blade. The Arabs carry as a distinction the “faranji,” a straight, thin, double-edged, guardless, and two-handed sword, about four feet long, and sharp as a carving-knife; the price varies from 10 to 100 dollars.

The negroid is an unmechanical race; his industry has scarcely passed the limits of savage invention. Though cotton abounds in the interior, the Wanyamwezi only have attempted a rude loom; and the working of iron and copper is confined to the Wafyoma and the Lakist races. The gourd is still the principal succedaneum for pottery. The other branches of industry which are necessary to all barbarians are mats and baskets, ropes and cords.

Carpentering amongst the East Africans is still in its rudest stage; no Dædalus has yet taught them to jag their knives into saws. It is limited to making the cots and cartels upon which the people invariably sleep, and to carving canoes, mortars, bowls, rude platters, spoons, stools, and similar articles of furniture. The tree, after being rung and barked to dry the juices, is felled by fire or the axe; it is then cut up into lengths of the required dimensions, and hacked into shape with slow and painful toil. The tools are a shoka, or hatchet of puerile dimensions, perhaps one-fifth the size of our broad axes, yet the people can use it to better advantage than the admirable implement of the backwoodsman. The mbizo or adze is also known in the interior, but none except the Fundi and the slaves trained upon the coast have ever seen a hand-saw, a centre-bit, or a chisel.

Previous to weaving, cotton is picked and cleaned with the hand; it is then spun into a coarse thread. Like the Paharis of India, the East Africans ignore the distaff; they twist the material round the left wrist. The mlavi, or spindle, is of two forms; one is a short stick, inserted in a hole practised through a lump of lead or burnt clay, like the Indian bhaunri; the other is a thin bit of wood, about 1·5 ft. long, with a crescent of the same material on the top, and an iron hook to hold the thread. The utanda, or loom-frame differs from the vertical-shaped article of West Africa. Two side-poles about twelve feet long, and supported at the corners by four uprights, are placed at an angle, enabling the workman to stand to his work; and the oblong is completed by two cross-bars, round which the double line of the warp, or longitudinal threads of the woven tissue, are secured. The dimensions of the web vary from five to six feet in length, by two to three broad. The weft, or transverse thread, is shot with two or three thin laths, or spindles, round which the white and coloured yarns are wound, through the doubled warp, which is kept apart by another lath passing between the two layers, and the spindle is caught with the left hand as it appears at the left side. Lastly, a lath, broader and flatter than the others, is used to close the work, and to beat the thread home. As the workman deems three hours per diem ample labour, a cloth will rarely be finished under a week. Taste is shown in the choice of patterns: they are sometimes checks with squares, alternately black and white, or in stripes of black variegated with red dyes upon a white ground: the lines are generally broad in the centre, but narrow along the edges, and the texture not a little resembles our sacking. The dark colour is obtained from the juice of the mzima-tree; it stains the yarn to a dull brown, which becomes a dark mulberry, or an Indian-ink black, when buried for two or three days in the vegetable mud of the ponds and pools. The madder-red is produced by boiling the root and bark of a bush called mda’a; an ochreish tint is also extracted from the crimson matter that stains the cane and the leaves of red holcus. All cloths have the tambua or fringe indispensable in East Africa. Both weaving and dyeing are men’s not women’s work in these lands.

The cloth is a poor article: like the people of Ashanti, who from time immemorial have woven their own cottons, the East African ever prefers foreign fabrics. The loose texture of his own produce admits wind and rain; when dry it is rough and unpleasant, when wet heavy, comfortless as leather, and it cannot look clean, as it is never bleached. According to the Arabs, the yarn is often dipped into a starch made from grain, for the purpose of thickening the appearance of the texture: this disappears after the first washing, and the cloth must be pegged down to prevent its shrinking to half-size. The relative proportion of warp and weft is unknown, and the woolly fuzzy quality of the half-wild cotton now in use impoverishes the fabric. Despite the labour expended upon these cloths, the largest size may be purchased for six feet of American domestics, or for a pair of iron hoes: there is therefore little inducement to extend the manufacture.

Iron is picked up in the state called Utundwe, or gangue, from the sides of low sandstone hills: in places the people dig pits from two to four feet deep, and, according to the Arabs, they find tears, nodules, and rounded lumps. The pisolithic iron, common in the maritime regions, is not worked. The mhesi or blacksmith’s art is still in its infancy. The iron-stone is carried to the smithy, an open shed, where the work is done: the smelting-furnace is a hole in the ground, filled with lighted charcoal, upon which the utundwe is placed, and, covered with another layer of fire, it is allowed to run through the fuel. The blast is produced by mafukutu (bellows): they are two roughly rounded troughs, about three inches deep by six in diameter, hewn out of a single bit of wood and prolonged into a pair of parallel branches, pierced for the passage of the wind through two apertures in the walls of the troughs. The troughs are covered with skin, to which are fixed two long projecting sticks for handles, which may be worked by a man sitting. A stone is placed upon the bellows for steadiness, and clay nozzles, or holcus-canes with a lateral hole, are fixed on to the branches to prevent them from charring. Sometimes as many as five pairs are worked at once, and great is the rapidity required to secure a continuous outdraught. Mr. Andersson (“Lake Ngami,” chap. xvi.) gives a sketch of a similar contrivance amongst the South Africans: the clay-tubes, however, are somewhat larger than those used in Unyamwezi by “blacksmiths at work.” The ore is melted and remelted several times, till pure; tempering and case-hardening are unknown, and it is stored for use by being cast in clay-moulds, or made up into hoes. The hammer and anvil are generally smooth stones. The principal articles of ironmongery are spears, assegais, and arrow-heads, battle-axes, hatchets, and adzes, knives and daggers, sickles and razors, rings and sambo, or wire circlets. The kinda is a large bell, hung by the ivory-porter to his tusk on the line of the march: the kengere or kiugi a smaller variety which he fastens to his legs. Pipes, with iron bowls and stems, are made by the more ingenious, and the smoker manufactures for himself small pincers or pliers which, curious to say, are unknown even by name to the more civilised people of Zanzibar.

Copper is not found upon this line in East Africa. From the country of the Kazembe, however, an excellent red and heavy, soft and bright variety, not unlike that of Japan, finds its way to Ujiji, and sometimes to the coast. It is sold in bars from one to two feet long. At Ujiji, where it is cheap, four to five pounds are procurable for two doti, there worth about four dollars. Native copper, therefore, is almost as expensive as that imported from Europe. It is used in making the rude and clumsy bangles affected by both sexes, sambo, and ornaments for the spear and bow, the staff and the knobkerry.

[Illustration: Gourds.]

The art of ceramics has made but little progress in East Africa; no Anacharsis has yet arisen to teach her sons the use of the wheel. The figuline, a greyish-brown clay, is procured from river-beds, or is dug up in the country; it is subjected to the preliminary operations of pounding, rubbing dry upon a stone, pulverising, and purifying from stones and pebbles. It is then worked into a thick mass, with water, and the potter fashions it with the hand, first shaping the mouth; he adds an inch to it when dry, hardens it in the sun, makes another addition, and thus proceeds till it is finished. Lines and other ornaments having been traced, the pots are baked in piles of seven or eight, by burning grass--wood-fire would crack them--consequently the material always remains half-raw. Usually the colour becomes lamp-black; in Usagara, however, the potter’s clay burns red, like the soil--the effect of iron. A cunning workman will make in a day four of these pots, some of them containing several gallons, and their perfect regularity of form, and often their picturesqueness of shape, surprise the stranger. The best are made in Ujiji, Karagwah, and Ugunda: those of Unyamwezi are inferior, and the clay of Zanzibar is of all the worst.

There are many kinds of pots which not a little resemble the glazed jars of ancient Egypt. The ukango, which acts as vat in fermenting liquor, is of the greatest dimensions. The mtungi is a large water-vessel with a short and narrow neck, and rounded at the bottom so as to be conveniently carried on the head. The chungu, or cooking-pot, has a wide and open mouth; it is of several varieties, large and small. The mkungu is a shallow bowl, precisely like those made at the tomb of Moses, and now familiar to Europe. At Ujiji and on the Lake they also manufacture smaller vessels, with and without spouts.

In a country where pottery is scarce and dear, the buyu or Cucurbita lagenaria supplies every utensil except those used for cooking; its many and various adaptations render it a valuable production. The people train it to grow in the most fantastic shapes, and ornament it by tatooing with dark paint, and by patterns worked in brass tacks and wires; where it splits, it is artistically sewn together. The larger kinds serve as well-buckets, water-pots, travelling-canteens, churns, and the sounding-boards of musical instruments: a hookah, or water-pipe, is made by distorting the neck, and the smaller varieties are converted into snuff-boxes, medicine-cases, and unguent-pots. The fruit of the calabash-tree is also called buyu: split and dried it is used as ladles, but it is too small to answer all the purposes of the gourd.

The East Africans excel in the manufacture of mtemba or bori--pipe-heads. These are of two kinds. One is made from a soft stone, probably steatite, found in Usonga, near Utumbara, and on the road to Karagwah: it is, however, rare, and about ten times the price of the clay bowls, because less liable to break. The other is made of a plastic or pipe-clay, too brittle to serve for pots, and it invariably cracks at the shank, unless bound with wire. Both are hand-made, and are burned in the same rough way as the pottery. At Msene, where the clay pipe is cheapest, the price of the bowl is a khete, or double string of white or blue beads. The pipe of Unyamwezi is of graceful shape, a cone with the apex downwards; this leaves but little of the hot, oily, and high-smelling tobacco at the bottom, whereas in Europe the contrary seems to be the rule. In Ujiji the bowl is small, rounded, and shallow; it is, moreover, very brittle. The most artful “mtemba” is made by the people of Uvira: black inside, like other pottery, its exterior is coloured a greyish-white, and is adorned with red by means of the Indian geru (Colcothar or Crocus Martis). Bhang is always, and tobacco is sometimes, smoked in a water-pipe: the bowl is of huge size, capable of containing at least half a pound, and its upper half is made to incline towards the smoker’s face. The Lakist tribes have a graceful variety, like the Indian “chillam,” very different from the awkward, unwieldy, and distorted article now fashionable in Unyamwezi and the Eastern countries. The usual pipe-stem is a tube of about 1·5 feet long, generally a hollow twig of the dwarf melewele-tree. As it is rudely bored with hot wire, it must be made air-tight by wax and a coating of brass or copper wire; a strap of hairy skin prevents the pipe-shank

## parting from the stick. Iron and brass tubes are rare and highly prized;

the fortunate possessor will sometimes ask for a single specimen two shukkahs.

Basket-making and mat-weaving are favourite occupations in East Africa for both sexes and all ages; even the Arabs may frequently be seen absorbed in an employment which in Oman would be considered derogatory to manliness. The sengo, or common basket, from the coast to the Lake, is an open, shallow, and pan-shaped article, generally made of mwanzi, or bamboo-bark, reddened in parts and stained black in others by the root of the Mkuruti and other trees, and white where the outer coat has been removed from the bamboo. The body, which resembles a popular article in ancient Egypt, is neatly plaited, and the upper ends are secured to a stout hoop of the same material. The kanda (in the plural makanda) acts in the interior as matting for rooms, and is converted into bags for covering bales of cloth, beads, and similar articles. It is made from the myara (myala) or Chamærops humilis; the leaf is peeled, sun-dried, and split with a bit of iron into five or six lengths, joined at the base, which is trimmed for plaiting. The Karagwah, the only mat made in the interior of Africa, is used as bedding and carpeting; on journeys the porters bivouac under it; it swells with the wet, and soon becomes impervious to rain or heavy dew. It is of two kinds: one of rushes growing in the vicinity of water, the other of grass rolled up into little bundles. A complicated stitch runs along the whole length in double lines. The best description of mat is called mkeke. It is made at Zanzibar and the coast, from the young fronds of the ukhindu or brab, neatly stained with various dyes. Women of family pride themselves upon their skill in making the mkeke, which still attains a price of four dollars. Amongst the maritime races none but the chiefs have a right to sit upon it; there are no such distinctions in the interior, where these mats are carried for sale by the slaves. From the brab also are made neat strainers to purify honey, pombe, and similar articles. They are open-mouthed cylinders, from one to two feet long, and varying in diameter from three to six inches. The bottom is narrowed by whipping fibre round the loose ends of the leaves. The fishing-nets have been described when treating of the Tanganyika. The luávo, or hand-net, is made of calabash or other fibre, with coarse wide meshes; it is affixed to two sticks firmly planted in the ground, and small animals are driven into it by beaters.

The basts or barks and fibrous substances in East Africa are cheap and abundant, but labour and conveyance being difficult and expensive, they would require to be shipped from Zanzibar in the condition of half-stuff. The best and most easily divisible into pliant and knot-tying fibres are, upon the coast the pineapple, and in the interior the plantain. The next in value are the integuments of the calabash and the myombo tree. These fibres would produce a good article were it not for the artlessness of African manipulation. The bark is pounded or chewed, and, in lieu of spinning, is twisted between the hands; the largest ropes are made in half an hour, and break after a few minutes of hard work. A fine silky twine, used for fishing, is made from the aloetic plants called by the Wasawahili mkonge, and by the Arabs bag, masad and kideh: it is the hig or haskul of Somaliland, where it affects the poorest ground, cannot be burnt down, and is impassable to naked legs and cattle. The leaves are stripped of their coats, and the ends being tightly bound between two pieces of wood, the mass of fibre is drawn out like a sword from its sheath. Fatilah, or matchlock matches, are made in Zanzibar of cotton, and in the interior of calabash fibre.