The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death Volume I Part 4

A leopard came a little after dark while the moon was s.h.i.+ning, and took away a little dog from among us; it is said to have taken off a person a few days ago.

_22nd May, 1866._--The men returned with but little food in return for much cloth. Matumora is very friendly, but he has nothing to give save a little green sorghum, and that he brings daily.

A south wind blows strongly every afternoon. The rains ceased about the middle of May, and the temperature is lowered. A few heavy night showers closed the rainy season.

_23rd--24th May, 1866._--I took some Lunar observations.

_25th May, 1866._--Matumora is not Ndonde. A chief to the south-west of this owns that name and belongs to the Matumbwe tribe.

_26th May, 1866._--I sent Musa westwards to buy food, and he returned on the evening of 27th without success; he found an Arab slave-dealer waiting in the path, who had bought up all the provisions. About 11 P.M. we saw two men pa.s.s our door with two women in a chain; one man carried fire in front, the one behind, a musket. Matumora admits that his people sell each other.

_27th May, 1866._--The havildar and Abraham came up. Havildar says that all I said in my note was true, and when it was read to the sepoys they bewailed their folly, he adds that if they were all sent away disgraced, no one would be to blame but themselves. He brought them to Ha.s.sane's, but they were useless, though they begged to be kept on: I may give them another trial, but at present they are a sad inc.u.mbrance. South-west of this the Manganja begin; but if one went by them, there is a s.p.a.ce beyond in the south-west without people.

The country due west of this is described by all to be so mountainous and beset by Mazitu, that there is no possibility of pa.s.sing that way.

I must therefore make my way to the middle of the Lake, cross over, and then take up my line of 1863.

_2nd June, 1866._--The men sent to the Matambwe south-east of this returned with a good supply of grain. The sepoys won't come; they say they cannot,--a mere excuse, v because they tried to prevail on the Na.s.sick boys to go slowly like them, and wear my patience out. They killed one camel with the b.u.t.t ends of their muskets, beating it till it died. I thought of going down disarming them all, and taking five or six of the willing ones, but it is more trouble than profit, so I propose to start westwards on Monday the 4th, or Tuesday the 5th. My sepoys offered Ali eight rupees to take them to the coast, thus it has been a regularly organized conspiracy.

From the appearance of the cow-buffalo, I fear the tsetse is its chief enemy, but there is a place like a bayonet wound on its shoulder, and many of the wounds or bruises on the camels were so probed that I suspect the sepoys.

Many things African are possessed of as great vitality in their line as the African people. The white ant was imported accidentally into St. Helena from the coast of Guinea, and has committed such ravages in the town of St. James, that numerous people have been ruined, and the governor calls out for aid against them. In other so-called new countries a wave of English weeds follows the tide of English emigration, and so with insects; the European house-fly chases away the blue-bottle fly in New Zealand. Settlers have carried the house-fly in bottles and boxes for their new locations, but what European insect will follow us and extirpate the tsetse? The Arabs have given the Makonde bugs, but we have the house-fly wherever we go, the blue-bottle and another like the house-fly, but with a sharp proboscis; and several enormous gad-flies. Here there is so much room for everything. In New Zealand the Norwegian rat is driven off by even the European mouse; not to mention the Hanoverian rat of Waterton, which is lord of the land. The Maori say that "as the white man's rat has driven away the native rat, so the European fly drives away our own; and as the clover kills our fern, so will the Maori disappear before the white man himself." The hog placed ash.o.r.e by Captain Cook has now overrun one side of the island, and is such a nuisance that a large farmer of 100,000 acres has given sixpence per head for the destruction of some 20,000, and without any sensible diminution; this would be no benefit here, for the wild hogs abound and do much damage, besides affording food for the tsetse: the brutes follow the ewes with young, and devour the poor lambs as soon as they make their appearance.

_3rd June, 1866._--The cow-buffalo fell down foaming at the mouth, and expired. The meat looks fat and nice, and is relished by the people, a little glariness seemed to be present on the foreleg, and I sometimes think that, notwithstanding the dissimilarity of the symptoms observed in the camels and buffaloes now, and those we saw in oxen and horses, the evil may be the tsetse, after all, but they have been badly used, without a doubt. The calf has a cut half an inch deep, the camels have had large ulcers, and at last a peculiar smell, which portends death.

I feel perplexed, and not at all certain as to the real causes of death.

I asked Matumora if the Matambwe believed in G.o.d, he replied, that he did not know Him, and I was not to ask the people among whom I was going if they prayed to Him, because they would imagine that I wished them to be killed. I told him that we loved to speak about Him, &c. He said, when they prayed they offered a little meal and then prayed, but did not know much about Him.

They have all great reverence for the Deity, and the deliberate way in which they say "We don't know Him" is to prevent speaking irreverently, as that may injure the country. The name is "Mulungu": Makochera afterwards said, that "He was not good, because He killed so many people."

_4th June, 1866._--Left Ngomano. I was obliged to tell the Na.s.sick boys that they must either work or return, it was absurd to have them eating up our goods, and not even carrying their own things, and I would submit to it no more: five of them carry bales, and two the luggage of the rest. Abraham and Richard are behind. I gave them bales to carry, and promised them ten rupees per month, to begin on this date. Abraham has worked hard all along, and his pay may be due from 7th April, the day we started from Kindany.

_5th June, 1866._--We slept at a village called Lamba, on the banks of the Rovuma, near a brawling torrent of 150 yards, or 200 perhaps, with many islands and rocks in it. The country is covered with open forest, with patches of cultivation everywhere, but all dried up at present and withered, partly from drought and partly from the cold of winter.

We pa.s.sed a village with good ripe sorghum cut down, and the heads or ears all laid neatly in a row, this is to get it dried in the sun, and not shaken out by the wind, by waving to and fro; besides it is also more easily watched from being plundered by birds. The sorghum occasionally does not yield seed, and is then the _Sorghum saccharatum_, for the stalk contains abundance of sugar, and is much relished by the natives. Now that so much has failed to yield seed, being indeed just in flower, the stalks are chewed as if sugar-cane, and the people are fat thereon; but the hungry time is in store when these stalles are all done. They make the best provision in their power against famine by planting beans and maize in moist spots. The common native pumpkin forms a b.a.s.t.a.r.d sort in the same way, but that is considered very inferior.

_6th June, 1866._--Great hills of granite are occasionally in sight towards the north, but the trees, though scraggy, close in the view.

We left a village, called Mekosi, and goon came to a slaving party by a sand stream. They said that they had bought two slaves, but they had run away from them, and asked us to remain with them; more civil than inviting. We came on to Makochera, the princ.i.p.al headman in this quarter, and found him a merry laughing mortal, without any good looks to recommend his genial smile,--low forehead, covered with deep wrinkles; flat nose, somewhat of the a.s.syrian shape; a big mouth and lean body. He complained of the Machinga (a Waiyau tribe north of him and the Rovuma) stealing his people. Lat. of village, 11 22' 49" S.

The river being about 2' north, still shows that it makes a trend to the north after we pa.s.s Ngomano. Makochera has been an elephant hunter. Few acknowledge as a reason for slaving that sowing and spinning cotton for clothing is painful. I waited some days for the Na.s.sick boys, who are behind, though we could not buy any food except at enormous prices and long distances off.

_7th June, 1866._--The havildar and two sepoys came up with Abraham, but Richard, a Na.s.sick boy, is still behind from weakness. I sent three off to help him with the only cordials we could muster. The sepoys sometimes profess inability to come on, but it is unwillingness to encounter hards.h.i.+p: I must move on whether they come or not, for we cannot obtain food here. I sent the sepoys some cloth, and on the 8th proposed to start, but every particle of food had been devoured the night before, so we despatched two parties to scour the country round, and give any price rather than want.

I could not prevail on Makochera to give me a specimen of poetry; he was afraid, neither he nor his forefathers had ever seen an Englishman. He thought that G.o.d was not good because He killed so many people. Dr. Roscher must have travelled as an Arab if he came this way, for he was not known.[10]

_9th June, 1866._--We now left and marched through the same sort of forest, gradually ascending in alt.i.tude as we went west, then we came to huge ma.s.ses of granite, or syenite, with flakes peeling off. They are covered with a plant with gra.s.sy-looking leaves and rough stalk which strips into portions similar to what are put round candles as ornaments. It makes these hills look light grey, with patches of black rock at the more perpendicular parts; the same at about ten miles off look dark blue. The ground is often hard and stony, but all covered over with gra.s.s and plants: looking down at it, the gra.s.s is in tufts, and like that on the Kalahari desert. Trees show uplands.

One tree of which bark cloth is made, pterocarpus, is abundant.

Timber-trees appear here and there, but for the most part the growth is stunted, and few are higher than thirty feet. We spent the night by a hill of the usual rounded form, called Njengo. The Rovuma comes close by, but leaves us again to wind among similar great ma.s.ses. Lat.

11 20' 05" S.

_10th June, 1866._--A very heavy march through the same kind of country, no human habitation appearing; we pa.s.sed a dead body--recently, it was said, starved to death. The large tract between Makochera's and our next station at Ngozo hill is without any perennial stream; water is found often by digging in the sand streams which we several times crossed; sometimes it was a trickling rill, but I suspect that at other seasons all is dry, and people are made dependent on the Rovuma alone. The first evidence of our being near the pleasant haunts of man was a nice little woman drawing water at a well. I had become separated from the rest: on giving me water she knelt down, and, as country manners require, held it up to me with _both_ hands. I had been misled by one of the carriers, who got confused, though the rounded ma.s.s of Ngozo was plainly visible from the heights we crossed east of it.

An Arab party bolted on hearing of our approach: they don't trust the English, and this conduct increases our importance among the natives.

Lat. 11 18' 10" S.

_11th June, 1866._--Our carriers refuse to go further, because they say that they fear being captured here on their return.

_12th June, 1866._--I paid off the carriers, and wait for a set from this. A respectable man, called Makoloya, or Impande, visited me, and wished to ask some questions as to where I was going, and how long I should be away. He had heard from a man who came from Ibo, or Wibo, about the Bible, a large book which was consulted.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Tattoo of Matambwe.]

_13th June, 1866._--Makoloya brought his wife and a little corn, and says that his father told him that there is a G.o.d, but nothing more.

The marks on their foreheads and bodies are meant only to give beauty in the dance, they seem a sort of heraldic ornament, for they can at once tell by his tattoo to what tribe or portion of tribe a man belongs. The tattoo or tembo of the Matambwe and Upper Makonde very much resembles the drawings of the old Egyptians; wavy lines, such as the ancients made to signify water, trees and gardens enclosed in squares, seem to have been meant of old for the inhabitants who lived on the Rovuma, and cultivated also, the son takes the tattoo of his father, and thus it has been perpetuated, though the meaning now appears lost. The Makoa have the half or nearly full moon, but it is, they say, all for ornament. Some blue stuff is rubbed into the cuts (I am told it is charcoal), and the ornament shows brightly in persons of light complexion, who by the bye are common. The Makonde and Matambwe file their front teeth to points; the Machinga, a Waiyan tribe, leave two points on the sides of the front teeth, and knock out one of the middle incisors above and below.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Machinga and Waiyan Teeth.]

_14th June, 1866._--I am now as much dependent on carriers as if I had never bought a beast of burden--but this is poor stuff to fill a journal with. We started off to Metaba to see if the chief there would lend some men. The headman, Kitw.a.n.ga, went a long way to convoy us; then turned, saying he was going to get men for Musa next day. We pa.s.sed near the base of the rounded ma.s.ses Ngozo and Mekanga, and think, from a near inspection, that they are over 2000 feet above the plain, possibly 3000 feet, and nearly bare, with only the peculiar gra.s.sy plant on some parts which are not too perpendicular. The people are said to have stores of grain on them, and on one the chief said there is water; he knows of no stone buildings of the olden time in the country. We pa.s.sed many ma.s.ses of ferruginous conglomerate, and I noticed that most of the gneiss dips westwards. The striae seem as if the rock had been partially molten: at times the strike is north and south, at others east and west; when we come to what may have been its surface, it is as if the striae had been stirred with a rod while soft.

We slept at a point of the Rovuma, above a cataract where a reach of comparatively still water, from 150 to 200 yards wide, allows a school of hippopotami to live: when the river becomes fordable in many places, as it is said to do in August and September, they must find it difficult to exist.

_15th June, 1866._--Another three hours' march brought us from the sleeping-place on the Rovuma to Metaba, the chief of which, Kinazombe, is an elderly man, with a cunning and severe cast of countenance, and a nose a.s.syrian in type; he has built a large reception house, in which a number of half-caste Arabs have taken up their abode. A great many of the people have guns, and it is astonis.h.i.+ng to see the number of slave-taming sticks abandoned along the road as the poor wretches gave in, and professed to have lost all hope of escape. Many huts have been built by the Arabs to screen themselves from the rain as they travelled. At Kinazombe's the second crop of maize is ready, so the hunger will not be very much felt.

_16th June, 1866._--We heard very sombre accounts of the country in front:--four or five days to Mtarika, and then ten days through jungle to Mataka's town: little food at Mtarika's, but plenty with Mataka, who is near the Lake. The Rovuma trends southerly after we leave Ngozo, and Masusa on that river is pointed out as south-west from Metaba, so at Ngozo the river may be said to have its furthest northing. Masusa is reported to be five days, or at least fifty miles, from Metaba. The route now becomes south-west.

The cattle of Africa are like the Indian buffalo, only partially tamed; they never give their milk without the presence of the calf or its stuffed skin, the "fulchan." The women adjacent to Mozambique partake a little of the wild animal's nature, for, like most members of the inferior races of animals, they refuse all intercourse with their husbands when enceinte and they continue this for about three years afterwards, or until the child is weaned, which usually happens about the third year. I was told, on most respectable authority, that many fine young native men marry one wife and live happily with her till this period; nothing will then induce her to continue to cohabit with him, and, as the separation is to continue for three years, the man is almost compelled to take up with another wife: this was mentioned to me as one of the great evils of society. The same absurdity prevails on the West Coast, and there it is said that the men acquiesce from ideas of purity.

It is curious that trade-rum should form so important an article of import on the West Coast while it is almost unknown on the East Coast, for the same people began the commerce in both instances. If we look north of Cape Delgado, we might imagine that the religious convictions of the Arabs had something to do with the matter, but the Portuguese south of Cape Delgado have no scruples in the matter, and would sell their grandfathers as well as the rum if they could make money by the transaction, they have even erected distilleries to furnish a vile spirit from the fruit of the cashew and other fruits and grain, but the trade does not succeed. They give their slaves also rewards of spirit, or "maata b.i.+.c.ho" ("kill the creature," or "craving within"), and you may meet a man who, having had much intercourse with Portuguese, may beg spirits, but the trade does not pay. The natives will drink it if furnished gratis. The indispensable "dash" of rum on the West Coast in every political transaction with independent chiefs is, however, quite unknown. The Moslems would certainly not abstain from trading in spirits were the trade profitable. They often asked for brandy from me in a sly way--as medicine; and when reminded that their religion forbade it, would say, "Oh, but we can drink it in secret."

It is something in the nature of the people quite inexplicable, that throughout the Makonde country hernia humoralis prevails to a frightful extent; it is believed by the natives to be the result of beer drinking, so they cannot be considered as abstemious.

_18th June, 1866._--Finding that Musa did not come up with the goods I left in his charge, and fearing that all was not right, we set off with all our hands who could carry, after service yesterday morning, and in six hours' hard tramp arrived here just in time, for a tribe of Wanindi, or Manindi, who are either Ajawas (Waiyau),[11] or pretended Mazitu, had tried to cross the Rovuma from the north bank. They came as plunderers, and Musa having received no a.s.sistance was now ready to defend the goods. A shot or two from the people of Kitw.a.n.ga made the Wanindi desert after they had entered the water.

Six sepoys and Simon had come up this length; Reuben and Mabruki reported Richard to be dead. This poor boy was left with the others at Liponde, and I never saw him again. I observed him a.s.sociating too much with the sepoys; and often felt inclined to reprove him, as their conversation is usually very bad, but I could not of my own knowledge say so. He came on with the others as far as Ha.s.sane or Pacha.s.sane: there he was too weak to come further, and as the sepoys were notoriously skulkers, I feared that poor Richard was led away by them, for I knew that they had made many attempts to draw away the other Na.s.sick boys from their duty. When, however, Abraham came up and reported Richard left behind by the sepoys, I became alarmed, and sent off three boys with cordials to help him on: two days after Abraham left he seems to have died, and I feel very sorry that I was not there to do what I could. I am told now that he never consented to the sepoy temptation: he said to Abraham that he wished he were dead, he was so much troubled. The people where he died were not v$ry civil to Simon.

The sepoys had now made themselves such an utter nuisance that I felt that I must take the upper hand with them, so I called them up this morning, and asked if they knew the punishment they had incurred by disobeying orders, and attempting to tamper with the Na.s.sick boys to turn them back. I told them they not only remained in the way when ordered to march, but offered eight rupees to Ali to lead them to the coast, and that the excuse of sickness was nought, for they had eaten heartily three meals a day while pretending illness. They had no excuse to offer, so I disrated the naik or corporal, and sentenced the others to carry loads; if they behave well, then they will get fatigue pay for doing fatigue duty, if ill, nothing but their pay. Their limbs are becoming contracted from sheer idleness; while all the other men are well and getting stronger they alone are disreputably slovenly and useless-looking. Their filthy habits are to be reformed, and if found at their habit of sitting down and sleeping for hours on the march, or without their muskets and pouches, they are to be flogged. I sent two of them back to bring up two comrades, left behind yesterday. All who have done work are comparatively strong.

[We may venture a word in pa.s.sing on the subject of native recruits, enlisted for service in Africa, and who return thither after a long absence. All the Na.s.sick boys were native-born Africans, and yet we see one of them succ.u.mb immediately. The truth is that natives; under these circ.u.mstances, are just as liable to the effects of malaria on landing as Europeans, although it is not often that fever a.s.sumes a dangerous form in such cases. The natives of the interior have the greatest dread of the illnesses which they say are sure to be in store for them if they visit the coast.]

_19th June, 1866._--I gave the sepoys light loads in order to inure them to exercise and strengthen them, and they carried willingly so long as the fright was on them, but when the fear of immediate punishment wore off they began their skulking again. One, Perim, reduced his load of about 20 lbs. of tea by throwing away the lead in which it was rolled, and afterwards about 15 lbs. of the tea, thereby diminis.h.i.+ng our stock to 5 lbs.

[Dr. Livingstone's short stay in England in 1864-5 was mainly taken up with compiling an account of his travels on the Zambesi and s.h.i.+re: during this time his mother expired in Scotland at a good old age.

When he went back to Africa he took with him, as part of his very scanty travelling equipment, a number of letters which he received from friends at different times in England, and he very often quoted them when he had an opportunity of sending letters home. We come to an entry at this time which shows that in these reminiscences he had not thus preserved an unmixed pleasure. He says:--]

I lighted on a telegram to-day:--"Your mother died at noon on the 18th June."

This was in 1865: it affected me not a little.

FOOTNOTES:

[9] Further on we found it called Nkonya.