A Popular Account of Dr. Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries

These people have a bad name in the country in front, even among their own tribe.  A slave-trading Arab we met above, thinking we were then on our way down the river, advised us not to land at the villages, but to stay in the boats, as the inhabitants were treacherous, and attacked at once, without any warning or provocation.  Our experience of their conduct fully confirmed the truth of what he said.  There was no trade on the river where they lived, but beyond that part there was a brisk canoe-trade in rice and salt; those further in the interior cultivating rice, and sending it down the river to be exchanged for salt, which is extracted from the earth in certain places on the banks.  Our assailants hardly anticipated resistance, and told a neighbouring chief that, if they had known who we were, they would not have attacked English, who can “bite hard.”  They offered no molestations on our way down, though we were an hour in passing their village.  Our canoe-men plucked up courage on finding that we had come off unhurt.  One of them, named Chiku, acknowledging that he had been terribly frightened, said.  “His fear was not the kind which makes a man jump overboard and run away; but that which brings the heart up to the mouth, and renders the man powerless, and no more able to fight than a woman.”

In the country of Chonga Michi, about 80 or 90 miles up the river, we found decent people, though of the same tribe, who treated strangers with civility.  A body of Makoa had come from their own country in the south, and settled here.  The Makoa are known by a cicatrice in the forehead shaped like the new moon with the horns turned downwards.  The tribe possesses all the country west of Mosambique; and they will not allow any of the Portuguese to pass into their country more than two hours’ distance from the fort.  A hill some ten or twelve miles distant, called Pau, has been visited during the present generation only by one Portuguese and one English officer, and this visit was accomplished only by the influence of the private friendship of a chief for this Portuguese gentleman.  Our allies have occupied the Fort of Mosambique for three hundred years, but in this, as in all other cases, have no power further than they can see from a gun-carriage.

The Makoa chief, Matingula, was hospitable and communicative, telling us all he knew of the river and country beyond.  He had been once to Iboe and once at Mosambique with slaves.  Our men understood his language easily.  A useless musket he had bought at one of the above places was offered us for a little cloth.  Having received a present of food from him, a railway rug was handed to him: he looked at it—had never seen cloth like that before—did not approve of it, and would rather have cotton cloth.  “But this will keep you warm at night.”—“Oh, I do not wish to be kept warm at night.”—We gave him a bit of cotton cloth, not one-third the value of the rug, but it was more highly prized.  His people refused to sell their fowls for our splendid prints and drab cloths.  They had probably been taken in with gaudy-patterned sham prints before.  They preferred a very cheap, plain, blue stuff of which they had experience.  A great quantity of excellent honey is collected all along the river, by bark hives being placed for the bees on the high trees on both banks.  Large pots of it, very good and clear, were offered in exchange for a very little cloth.  No wax was brought for sale; there being no market for this commodity, it is probably thrown away as useless.

At Michi we lose the tableland which, up to this point, bounds the view on both sides of the river, as it were, with ranges of flat-topped hills, 600 or 800 feet high; and to this plateau a level fertile plain succeeds, on which stand detached granite hills.  That portion of the tableland on the right bank seems to bend away to the south, still preserving the appearance of a hill range.  The height opposite extends a few miles further west, and then branches off in a northerly direction.  A few small pieces of coal were picked up on the sandbanks, showing that this useful mineral exists on the Rovuma, or on some of its tributaries: the natives know that it will burn.  At the lakelet Chidia, we noticed the same sandstone rock, with fossil wood on it, which we have on the Zambesi, and knew to be a sure evidence of coal beneath.  We mentioned this at the time to Captain Gardner, and our finding coal now seemed a verification of what we then said; the coal-field probably extends from the Zambesi to the Rovuma, if not beyond it.  Some of the rocks lower down have the permanent water-line three feet above the present height of the water.

A few miles west of the Makoa of Matingula, we came again among the Makondé, but now of good repute.  War and slavery have driven them to seek refuge on the sand-banks.  A venerable-looking old man hailed us as we passed, and asked us if we were going by without speaking.  We landed, and he laid down his gun and came to us; he was accompanied by his brother, who shook hands with every one in the boat, as he had seen people do at Kilwa.  “Then you have seen white men before?” we said.  “Yes,” replied the polite African, “but never people of your quality.”  These men were very black, and wore but little clothing.  A young woman, dressed in the highest style of Makondé fashion, punting as dexterously as a man could, brought a canoe full of girls to see us.  She wore an ornamental head-dress of red beads tied to her hair on one side of her head, a necklace of fine beads of various colours, two bright figured brass bracelets on her left arm, and scarcely a farthing’s worth of cloth, though it was at its cheapest.

As we pushed on westwards, we found that the river makes a little southing, and some reaches were deeper than any near the sea; but when we had ascended about 140 miles by the river’s course from the sea, soft tufa rocks began to appear; ten miles beyond, the river became more narrow and rocky, and when, according to our measurement, we had ascended 156 miles, our further progress was arrested.  We were rather less than two degrees in a straight line from the Coast.  The incidents worth noticing were but few: seven canoes with loads of salt and rice kept company with us for some days, and the further we went inland, the more civil the people became.

When we came to a stand, just below the island of Nyamatolo, Long. 38 degrees 36 minutes E., and Lat. 11 degrees 53 minutes, the river was narrow, and full of rocks.  Near the island there is a rocky rapid with narrow passages fit only for native canoes; the fall is small, and the banks quite low; but these rocks were an effectual barrier to all further progress in boats.  Previous reports represented the navigable part of this river as extending to the distance of a month’s sail from its mouth; we found that, at the ordinary heights of the water, a boat might reach the obstructions which seem peculiar to all African rivers in six or eight days.  The Rovuma is remarkable for the high lands that flank it for some eighty miles from the ocean.  The cataracts of other rivers occur in mountains, those of the Rovuma are found in a level part, with hills only in the distance.  Far away in the west and north we could see high blue heights, probably of igneous origin from their forms, rising out of a plain.

The distance from Ngomano, a spot thirty miles further up, to the Arab crossing-places of Lake Nyassa Tsenga or Kotakota was said to be twelve days.  The way we had discovered to Lake Nyassa by Murchison’s Cataracts had so much less land carriage, that we considered it best to take our steamer thither, by the route in which we were well known, instead of working where we were strangers; and accordingly we made up our minds to return.

The natives reported a worse place above our turning-point—the passage being still narrower than this.  An Arab, they said, once built a boat above the rapids, and sent it down full of slaves; but it was broken to pieces in these upper narrows.  Many still maintained that the Rovuma came from Nyassa, and that it is very narrow as it issues out of the lake.  One man declared that he had seen it with his own eyes as it left the lake, and seemed displeased at being cross-questioned, as if we doubted his veracity.

More satisfactory information, as it appeared to us, was obtained from others.  Two days, or thirty miles, beyond where we turned back, the Rovuma is joined by the Liendé, which, coming from the south-west, rises in the mountains on the east side of Nyassa.  The great slave route to Kilwa runs up the banks of this river, which is only ankle-deep at the dry season of the year.  The Rovuma itself comes from the W.N.W., and after the traveller passes the confluence of the Liendé at Ngomano or “meeting-place,” the chief of which part is named Ndondé, he finds the river narrow, and the people Ajawa.

Crocodiles in the Rovuma have a sorry time of it.  Never before were reptiles so persecuted and snubbed.  They are hunted with spears, and spring traps are set for them.  If one of them enters an inviting pool after fish, he soon finds a fence thrown round it, and a spring trap set in the only path out of the enclosure.  Their flesh is eaten, and relished.  The banks, on which the female lays her eggs by night, are carefully searched by day, and all the eggs dug out and devoured.  The fish-hawk makes havoc among the few young ones that escape their other enemies.  Our men were constantly on the look-out for crocodiles’ nests.  One was found containing thirty-five newly-laid eggs, and they declared that the crocodile would lay as many more the second night in another place.  The eggs were a foot deep in the sand on the top of a bank ten feet high.  The animal digs a hole with its foot, covers the eggs, and leaves them till the river rises over the nest in about three months afterwards, when she comes back, and assists the young ones out.  We once saw opposite Tette young crocodiles in December, swimming beside an island in company with an old one.  The yolk of the egg is nearly as white as the real white.  In taste they resemble hen’s eggs with perhaps a smack of custard, and would be as highly relished by whites as by blacks, were it not for their unsavoury origin in men-eaters.

Hunting the Senzé (Aulacodus Swindernianus), an animal the size of a large cat, but in shape more like a pig, was the chief business of men and boys as we passed the reedy banks and low islands.  They set fire to a mass of reeds, and, armed with sticks, spears, bows and arrows, stand in groups guarding the outlets through which the seared Senzé may run from the approaching flames.  Dark dense volumes of impenetrable smoke now roll over on the lee side of the islet, and shroud the hunters.  At times vast sheets of lurid flames bursting forth, roaring, crackling and exploding, leap wildly far above the tall reeds.  Out rush the terrified animals, and amid the smoke are seen the excited hunters dancing about with frantic gesticulations, and hurling stick, spear, and arrow at their burned out victims.  Kites hover over the smoke, ready to pounce on the mantis and locusts as they spring from the fire.  Small crows and hundreds of swallows are on eager wing, darting into the smoke and out again, seizing fugitive flies.  Scores of insects, in their haste to escape from the fire, jump into the river, and the active fish enjoy a rare feast.

We returned to the “Pioneer” on the 9th of October, having been away one month.  The ship’s company had used distilled water, a condenser having been sent out from England; and there had not been a single case of sickness on board since we left, though there were so many cases of fever the few days she lay in the same spot last year.  Our boat party drank the water of the river, and the three white sailors, who had never been in an African river before, had some slight attacks of fever.

CHAPTER XII

Return to the Zambesi—Bishop Mackenzie’s grave—Frightful scenes with crocodiles—Death of Mr. Thornton—African poisons—Recall of the Expedition.

We put to sea on the 18th of October, and, again touching at Johanna, obtained a crew of Johanna men and some oxen, and sailed for the Zambesi; but our fuel failing before we reached it, and the wind being contrary, we ran into Quillimane for wood.

Quillimane must have been built solely for the sake of carrying on the slave-trade, for no man in his senses would ever have dreamed of placing a village on such a low, muddy, fever-haunted, and mosquito-swarming site, had it not been for the facilities it afforded for slaving.  The bar may at springs and floods be easily crossed by sailing-vessels, but, being far from the land, it is always dangerous for boats.  Slaves, under the name of “free emigrants,” have gone by thousands from Quillimane, during the last six years, to the ports a little to the south, particularly to Massangano.  Some excellent brick-houses still stand in the place, and the owners are generous and hospitable: among them our good friend, Colonel Nuñez.  His disinterested kindness to us and to all our countrymen can never be forgotten.  He is a noble example of what energy and uprightness may accomplish even here.  He came out as a cabin-boy, and, without a single friend to help him, he has persevered in an honourable course until he is the richest man on the East Coast.  When Dr. Livingstone came down the Zambesi in 1856, Colonel Nuñez was the chief of the only four honourable, trustworthy men in the country.  But while he has risen a whole herd has sunk, making loud lamentations, through puffs of cigar-smoke, over negro laziness; they might add, their own.

All agricultural enterprise is virtually discouraged by Quillimane Government.  A man must purchase a permit from the Governor, when he wishes to visit his country farm; and this tax, in a country where labour is unpopular, causes the farms to be almost entirely left in the hands of a head slave, who makes returns to his master as interest or honesty prompts him.  A passport must also be bought whenever a man wishes to go up the river to Mazaro, Senna, or Tette, or even to reside for a month at Quillimane.  With a soil and a climate well suited for the growth of the cane, abundance of slave labour, and water communication to any market in the world, they have never made their own sugar.  All they use is imported from Bombay.  “The people of Quillimane have no enterprise,” said a young European Portuguese, “they do nothing, and are always wasting their time in suffering, or in recovering from fever.”

We entered the Zambesi about the end of November and found it unusually low, so we did not get up to Shupanga till the 19th of December.  The friends of our Mazaro men, who had now become good sailors and very attentive servants, turned out and gave them a hearty welcome back from the perils of the sea: they had begun to fear that they would never return.  We hired them at a sixteen-yard piece of cloth a month—about ten shillings’ worth, the Portuguese market-price of the cloth being then sevenpence halfpenny a yard,—and paid them five pieces each, for four-and-a-half months’ work.  A merchant at the same time paid other Mazaro men three pieces for seven months, and they were with him in the interior.  If the merchants do not prosper, it is not because labour is dear, but because it is scarce, and because they are so eager on every occasion to sell the workmen out of the country.  Our men had also received quantities of good clothes from the sailors of the “Pioneer” and of the “Orestes,” and were now regarded by their neighbours and by themselves as men of importance.  Never before had they possessed so much wealth: they believed that they might settle in life, being now of sufficient standing to warrant their entering the married state; and a wife and a hut were among their first investments.  Sixteen yards were paid to the wife’s parents, and a hut cost four yards.  We should have liked to have kept them in the ship, for they were well-behaved and had learned a great deal of the work required.  Though they would not themselves go again, they engaged others for us; and brought twice as many as we could take, of their brothers and cousins, who were eager to join the ship and go with us up the Shiré, or anywhere else.  They all agreed to take half-pay until they too had learned to work; and we found no scarcity of labour, though all that could be exported is now out of the country.

There had been a drought of unusual severity during the past season in the country between Lupata and Kebrabasa, and it had extended north-east to the Manganja highlands.  All the Tette slaves, except a very few household ones, had been driven away by hunger, and were now far off in the woods, and wherever wild fruit, or the prospect of obtaining anything whatever to keep the breath of life in them, was to be found.  Their masters were said never to expect to see them again.  There have been two years of great hunger at Tette since we have been in the country, and a famine like the present prevailed in 1854, when thousands died of starvation.  If men like the Cape farmers owned this country, their energy and enterprise would soon render the crops independent of rain.  There being plenty of slope or fall, the land could be easily irrigated from the Zambesi and its tributary streams.  A Portuguese colony can never prosper: it is used as a penal settlement, and everything must be done military fashion.  “What do I care for this country?” said the most enterprising of the Tette merchants, “all I want is to make money as soon possible, and then go to Bombay and enjoy it.”  All business at Tette was now suspended.  Carriers could not be found to take the goods into the interior, and the merchants could barely obtain food for their own families.  At Mazaro more rain had fallen, and a tolerable crop followed.  The people of Shupanga were collecting and drying different wild fruits, nearly all of which are far from palatable to a European taste.  The root of a small creeper called “bisé” is dug up and eaten.  In appearance it is not unlike the small white sweet potato, and has a little of the flavour of our potato.  It would be very good, if it were only a little larger.  From another tuber, called “ulanga,” very good starch can be made.  A few miles from Shupanga there is an abundance of large game, but the people here, though fond enough of meat, are not a hunting race, and seldom kill any.

The Shiré having risen, we steamed off on the 10th of January, 1863, with the “Lady Nyassa” in tow.  It was not long before we came upon the ravages of the notorious Mariano.  The survivors of a small hamlet, at the foot of Morambala, were in a state of starvation, having lost their food by one of his marauding parties.  The women were in the fields collecting insects, roots, wild fruits, and whatever could be eaten, in order to drag on their lives, if possible, till the next crop should be ripe.  Two canoes passed us, that had been robbed by Mariano’s band of everything they had in them; the owners were gathering palm-nuts for their subsistence.  They wore palm-leaf aprons, as the robbers had stripped them of their clothing and ornaments.  Dead bodies floated past us daily, and in the mornings the paddles had to be cleared of corpses, caught by the floats during the night.  For scores of miles the entire population of the valley was swept away by this scourge Mariano, who is again, as he was before, the great Portuguese slave-agent.  It made the heart ache to see the widespread desolation; the river-banks, once so populous, all silent; the villages burned down, and an oppressive stillness reigning where formerly crowds of eager sellers appeared with the various products of their industry.  Here and there might be seen on the bank a small dreary deserted shed, where had sat, day after day, a starving fisherman, until the rising waters drove the fish from their wonted haunts, and left him to die.  Tingané had been defeated; his people had been killed, kidnapped, and forced to flee from their villages.  There were a few wretched survivors in a village above the Ruo; but the majority of the population was dead.  The sight and smell of dead bodies was everywhere.  Many skeletons lay beside the path, where in their weakness they had fallen and expired.  Ghastly living forms of boys and girls, with dull dead eyes, were crouching beside some of the huts.  A few more miserable days of their terrible hunger, and they would be with the dead.

Oppressed with the shocking scenes around, we visited the Bishop’s grave; and though it matters little where a good Christian’s ashes rest, yet it was with sadness that we thought over the hopes which had clustered around him, as he left the classic grounds of Cambridge, all now buried in this wild place.  How it would have torn his kindly heart to witness the sights we now were forced to see!

In giving vent to the natural feelings of regret, that a man so eminently endowed and learned, as was Bishop Mackenzie, should have been so soon cut off, some have expressed an opinion that it was wrong to use an instrument so valuable merely to convert the heathen.  If the attempt is to be made at all, it is “penny wise and pound foolish” to employ any but the very best men, and those who are specially educated for the work.  An ordinary clergyman, however well suited for a parish, will not, without special training, make a Missionary; and as to their comparative usefulness, it is like that of the man who builds an hospital, as compared with that of the surgeon who in after years only administers for a time the remedies which the founder had provided in perpetuity.  Had the Bishop succeeded in introducing Christianity, his converts might have been few, but they would have formed a continuous roll for all time to come.

The Shiré fell two feet, before we reached the shallow crossing where we had formerly such difficulty, and we had now two ships to take up.  A hippopotamus was shot two miles above a bank on which the ship lay a fortnight: it floated in three hours.  As the boat was towing it down, the crocodiles were attracted by the dead beast, and several shots had to be fired to keep them off.  The bullet had not entered the brain of the animal, but driven a splinter of bone into it.  A little moisture with some gas issued from the wound, and this was all that could tell the crocodiles down the stream of a dead hippopotamus; and yet they came up from miles below.  Their sense of smell must be as acute as their hearing; both are quite extraordinary.  Dozens fed on the meat we left.  Our Krooman, Jumbo, used to assert that the crocodile never eats fresh meat, but always keeps it till it is high and tender—and the stronger it smells the better he likes it.  There seems to be some truth in this.  They can swallow but small pieces at a time, and find it difficult to tear fresh meat.  In the act of swallowing, which is like that of a dog, the head is raised out of the water.  We tried to catch some, and one was soon hooked; it required half-a-dozen hands to haul him up the river, and the shark-hook straightened, and he got away.  A large iron hook was next made, but, as the creatures could not swallow it, their jaws soon pressed it straight—and our crocodile-fishing was a failure.  As one might expect,—from the power even of a salmon—the tug of a crocodile was terribly strong.

The corpse of a boy floated past the ship; a monstrous crocodile rushed at it with the speed of a greyhound, caught it and shook it, as a terrier dog does a rat.  Others dashed at the prey, each with his powerful tail causing the water to churn and froth, as he furiously tore off a piece.  In a few seconds it was all gone.  The sight was frightful to behold.  The Shiré swarmed with crocodiles; we counted sixty-seven of these repulsive reptiles on a single bank, but they are not as fierce as they are in some rivers.  “Crocodiles,” says Captain Tuckey, “are so plentiful in the Congo, near the rapids, and so frequently carry off the women, who at daylight go down to the river for water, that, while they are filling their calabashes, one of the party is usually employed in throwing large stones into the water outside.”  Here, either a calabash on a long pole is used in drawing water, or a fence is planted.  The natives eat the crocodile, but to us the idea of tasting the musky-scented, fishy-looking flesh carried the idea of cannibalism.  Humboldt remarks, that in South America the alligators of some rivers are more dangerous than in others.  Alligators differ from crocodiles in the fourth or canine tooth going into a hole or socket in the upper jaw, while in the crocodile it fits into a notch.  The forefoot of the crocodile has five toes not webbed, the hindfoot has four toes which are webbed; in the alligator the web is altogether wanting.  They are so much alike that they would no doubt breed together.