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

We crossed in canoes the arm of the Lake, which joins Chia to Nyassa, and spent the night on its northern bank.  The whole country adjacent to the Lake, from this point up to Kota-kota Bay, is densely peopled by thousands who have fled from the forays of the Mazitu in hopes of protection from the Arabs who live there.  In three running rivulets we saw the Shuaré palm, and an oil palm which is much inferior to that on the West Coast.  Though somewhat similar in appearance, the fruit is not much larger than hazel-nuts, and the people do not use them, on account of the small quantity of oil which they afford.

The idea of using oil for light never seems to have entered the African mind.  Here a bundle of split and dried bamboo, tied together with creeping plants, as thick as a man’s body, and about twenty feet in length, is employed in the canoes as a torch to attract the fish at night.  It would be considered a piece of the most wasteful extravagance to burn the oil they obtain from the castor-oil bean and other seeds, and also from certain fish, or in fact to do anything with it but anoint their heads and bodies.

We arrived at Kota-kota Bay in the afternoon of the 10th September, 1863; and sat down under a magnificent wild fig-tree with leaves ten inches long, by five broad, about a quarter of a mile from the village of Juma ben Saidi, and Yakobe ben Arame, whom we had met on the River Kaombé, a little north of this, in our first exploration of the Lake.  We had rested but a short time when Juma, who is evidently the chief person here, followed by about fifty people, came to salute us and to invite us to take up our quarters in his village.  The hut which, by mistake, was offered, was so small and dirty, that we preferred sleeping in an open space a few hundred yards off.

Juma afterwards apologized for the mistake, and presented us with rice, meal, sugar-cane, and a piece of malachite.  We returned his visit on the following day, and found him engaged in building a dhow or Arab vessel, to replace one which he said had been wrecked.  This new one was fifty feet long, twelve feet broad, and five feet deep.  The planks were of a wood like teak, here called Timbati, and the timbers of a closer grained wood called Msoro.  The sight of this dhow gave us a hint which, had we previously received it, would have prevented our attempting to carry a vessel of iron past the Cataracts.  The trees around Katosa’s village were Timbati, and they would have yielded planks fifty feet long and thirty inches broad.  With a few native carpenters a good vessel could be built on the Lake nearly as quickly as one could be carried past the Cataracts, and at a vastly less cost.  Juma said that no money would induce him to part with this dhow.  He was very busy in transporting slaves across the Lake by means of two boats, which we saw returning from a trip in the afternoon.  As he did not know of our intention to visit him, we came upon several gangs of stout young men slaves, each secured by the neck to one common chain, waiting for exportation, and several more in slave-sticks.  These were all civilly removed before our interview was over, because Juma knew that we did not relish the sight.

When we met the same Arabs in 1861, they had but few attendants: according to their own account, they had now, in the village and adjacent country, 1500 souls.  It is certain that tens of thousands had flocked to them for protection, and all their power and influence must be attributed to the possession of guns and gunpowder.  This crowding of refugees to any point where there is a hope for security for life and property is very common in this region, and the knowledge of it made our hopes beat high for the success of a peaceful Mission on the shores of the Lake.  The rate, however, in which the people here will perish by the next famine, or be exported by Juma and others, will, we fear, depopulate those parts which we have just described as crowded with people.  Hunger will ere long compel them to sell each other.  An intelligent man complained to us of the Arabs often seizing slaves, to whom they took a fancy, without the formality of purchase; but the price is so low—from two to four yards of calico—that one can scarcely think this seizure and exportation without payment worth their while.  The boats were in constant employment, and, curiously enough, Ben Habib, whom we met at Linyanti in 1855, had been taken across the Lake, the day before our arrival at this Bay, on his way from Sesheké to Kilwa, and we became acquainted with a native servant of the Arabs, called Selelé Saidallah, who could speak the Makololo language pretty fairly from having once spent some months in the Barotsé Valley.

From boyhood upwards we have been accustomed, from time to time, to read in books of travels about the great advances annually made by Mohammedanism in Africa.  The rate at which this religion spreads was said to be so rapid, that in after days, in our own pretty extensive travels, we have constantly been on the look out for the advancing wave from North to South, which, it was prophesied, would soon reduce the entire continent to the faith of the false prophet.  The only foundation that we can discover for the assertions referred to, and for others of more recent date, is the fact that in a remote corner of North-Western Africa the Fulahs, and Mandingoes, and some others in Northern Africa, as mentioned by Dr. Barth, have made conquests of territory; but even they care so very little for the extension of their faith, that after the conquest no pains whatever are taken to indoctrinate the adults of the tribe.  This is in exact accordance with the impression we have received from our intercourse with Mohammedans and Christians.  The followers of Christ alone are anxious to propagate their faith.  A quasi philanthropist would certainly never need to recommend the followers of Islam, whom we have met, to restrain their benevolence by preaching that “Charity should begin at home.”

Though Selelé and his companions were bound to their masters by domestic ties, the only new idea they had imbibed from Mohammedanism was, that it would be wrong to eat meat killed by other people.  They thought it would be “unlucky.”  Just as the inhabitants of Kolobeng, before being taught the requirements of Christianity, refrained from hoeing their gardens on Sundays, lest they should reap an unlucky crop.  So far as we could learn, no efforts had been made to convert the natives, though these two Arabs, and about a dozen half-castes, had been in the country for many years; and judging from our experience with a dozen Mohammedans in our employ at high wages for sixteen months, the Africans would be the better men in proportion as they retained their native faith.  This may appear only a harsh judgment from a mind imbued with Christian prejudices; but without any pretention to that impartiality, which leaves it doubtful to which side the affections lean, the truth may be fairly stated by one who viewed all Mohammedans and Africans with the sincerest good will.

Our twelve Mohammedans from Johanna were the least open of any of our party to impression from kindness.  A marked difference in general conduct was apparent.  The Makololo, and other natives of the country, whom we had with us, invariably shared with each other the food they had cooked, but the Johanna men partook of their meals at a distance.  This, at first, we attributed to their Moslem prejudices; but when they saw the cooking process of the others nearly complete, they came, sat beside them, and ate the portion offered without ever remembering to return the compliment when their own turn came to be generous.  The Makololo and the others grumbled at their greediness, yet always followed the common custom of Africans of sharing their food with all who sit around them.  What vexed us most in the Johanna men was their indifference to the welfare of each other.  Once, when they were all coming to the ship after sleeping ashore, one of them walked into the water with the intention of swimming off to the boat, and while yet hardly up to his knees was seized by a horrid crocodile and dragged under; the poor fellow gave a shriek, and held up his hand for aid, but none of his countrymen stirred to his assistance, and he was never seen again.  On asking his brother-in-law why he did not help him, he replied, “Well, no one told him to go into the water.  It was his own fault that he was killed.”  The Makololo on the other hand rescued a woman at Senna by entering the water, and taking her out of the crocodile’s mouth.

It is not assumed that their religion had much to do in the matter.  Many Mohammedans might contrast favourably with indifferent Christians; but, so far as our experience in East Africa goes, the moral tone of the follower of Mahomed is pitched at a lower key than that of the untutored African.  The ancient zeal for propagating the tenets of the Koran has evaporated, and been replaced by the most intense selfishness and grossest sensuality.  The only known efforts made by Mohammedans, namely, those in the North-West and North of the continent, are so linked with the acquisition of power and plunder, as not to deserve the name of religious propagandism; and the only religion that now makes proselytes is that of Jesus Christ.  To those who are capable of taking a comprehensive view of this subject, nothing can be adduced of more telling significance than the well-attested fact, that while the Mohammedans, Fulahs, and others towards Central Africa, make a few proselytes by a process which gratifies their own covetousness, three small sections of the Christian converts, the Africans in the South, in the West Indies, and on the West Coast of Africa actually contribute for the support and spread of their religion upwards of £15,000 annually. 7  That religion which so far overcomes the selfishness of the human heart must be Divine.

Leaving Kota-kota Bay, we turned away due West on the great slave route to Katanga’s and Cazembé’s country in Londa.  Juma lent us his servant, Selelé, to lead us the first day’s march.  He said that the traders from Kilwa and Iboe cross the Lake either at this bay, or at Tsenga, or at the southern end of the Lake; and that wherever they may cross they all go by this path to the interior.  They have slaves with them to carry their goods, and when they reach a spot where they can easily buy others, they settle down and begin the traffic, and at once cultivate grain.  So much of the land lies waste, that no objection is ever made to any one taking possession of as much as he needs; they can purchase a field of cassava for their present wants for very little, and they continue trading in the country for two or three years, and giving what weight their muskets possess to the chief who is most liberal to them.

The first day’s march led us over a rich, well-cultivated plain.  This was succeeded by highlands, undulating, stony, and covered with scraggy trees.  Many banks of well rounded shingle appear.  The disintegration of the rocks, now going on, does not round off the angles; they are split up by the heat and cold into angular fragments.  On these high downs we crossed the River Kaombé.  Beyond it we came among the upland vegetation—rhododendrons, proteas, the masuko, and molompi.  At the foot of the hill, Kasuko-suko, we found the River Bua running north to join the Kaombé.  We had to go a mile out of our way for a ford; the stream is deep enough in parts for hippopotami.  The various streams not previously noticed, crossed in this journey, had before this led us to the conclusion, independently of the testimony of the natives, that no large river ran into the north end of the Lake.  No such affluent was needed to account for the Shiré’s perennial flow.

On September 15th we reached the top of the ascent which, from its many ups and downs, had often made us puff and blow as if broken-winded.  The water of the streams we crossed was deliciously cold, and now that we had gained the summit at Ndonda, where the boiling-point of water showed an altitude of 3440 feet above the sea, the air was delightful.  Looking back we had a magnificent view of the Lake, but the haze prevented our seeing beyond the sea horizon.  The scene was beautiful, but it was impossible to dissociate the lovely landscape whose hills and dales had so sorely tried our legs and lungs, from the sad fact that this was part of the great slave route now actually in use.  By this road many “Ten thousands” have here seen “the Sea,” “the Sea,” but with sinking hearts; for the universal idea among the captive gangs is, that they are going to be fattened and eaten by the whites.  They cannot of course be so much shocked as we should be—their sensibilities are far from fine, their feelings are more obtuse than ours—in fact, “the live eels are used to being skinned,” perhaps they rather like it.  We who are not philosophic, blessed the Providence which at Thermopylæ in ancient days rolled back the tide of Eastern conquest from the West, and so guided the course of events that light and liberty and gospel truth spread to our distant isle, and emancipating our race freed them from the fear of ever again having to climb fatiguing heights and descend wearisome hollows in a slave-gang, as we suppose they did when the fair English youths were exposed for sale at Rome.

Looking westwards we perceived that, what from below had the appearance of mountains, was only the edge of a table-land which, though at first undulating, soon became smooth, and sloped towards the centre of the country.  To the south a prominent mountain called Chipata, and to the south-west another named Ngalla, by which the Bua is said to rise, gave character to the landscape.  In the north, masses of hills prevented our seeing more than eight or ten miles.

The air which was so exhilarating to Europeans had an opposite effect on five men who had been born and reared in the malaria of the Delta of the Zambesi.  No sooner did they reach the edge of the plateau at Ndonda, than they lay down prostrate, and complained of pains all over them.  The temperature was not much lower than that on the shores of the Lake below, 76 degrees being the mean temperature of the day, 52 degrees the lowest, and 82 degrees the highest during the twenty-four hours; at the Lake it was about l0 degrees higher.  Of the symptoms they complained of—pains everywhere—nothing could be made.  And yet it was evident that they had good reason for saying that they were ill.  They scarified almost every part of their bodies as a remedial measure; medicines, administered on the supposition that their malady was the effect of a sudden chill, had no effect, and in two days one of them actually died in consequence of, as far as we could judge, a change from a malarious to a purer and more rarefied atmosphere.

As we were on the slave route, we found the people more churlish than usual.  On being expostulated with about it, they replied, “We have been made wary by those who come to buy slaves.”  The calamity of death having befallen our party, seemed, however, to awaken their sympathies.  They pointed out their usual burying-place, lent us hoes, and helped to make the grave.  When we offered to pay all expenses, they showed that they had not done these friendly offices without fully appreciating their value; for they enumerated the use of the hut, the mat on which the deceased had lain, the hoes, the labour, and the medicine which they had scattered over the place to make him rest in peace.

The primitive African faith seems to be that there is one Almighty Maker of heaven and earth; that he has given the various plants of earth to man to be employed as mediators between him and the spirit world, where all who have ever been born and died continue to live; that sin consists in offences against their fellow-men, either here or among the departed, and that death is often a punishment of guilt, such as witchcraft.  Their idea of moral evil differs in no respect from ours, but they consider themselves amenable only to inferior beings, not to the Supreme.  Evil-speaking—lying—hatred—disobedience to parents—neglect of them—are said by the intelligent to have been all known to be sin, as well as theft, murder, or adultery, before they knew aught of Europeans or their teaching.  The only new addition to their moral code is, that it is wrong to have more wives than one.  This, until the arrival of Europeans, never entered into their minds even as a doubt.

Everything not to be accounted for by common causes, whether of good or evil, is ascribed to the Deity.  Men are inseparably connected with the spirits of the departed, and when one dies he is believed to have joined the hosts of his ancestors.  All the Africans we have met with are as firmly persuaded of their future existence as of their present life.  And we have found none in whom the belief in the Supreme Being was not rooted.  He is so invariably referred to as the Author of everything supernatural, that, unless one is ignorant of their language, he cannot fail to notice this prominent feature of their faith.  When they pass into the unseen world, they do not seem to be possessed with the fear of punishment.  The utensils placed upon the grave are all broken as if to indicate that they will never be used by the departed again.  The body is put into the grave in a sitting posture, and the hands are folded in front.  In some parts of the country there are tales which we could translate into faint glimmerings of a resurrection; but whether these fables, handed down from age to age, convey that meaning to the natives themselves we cannot tell.  The true tradition of faith is asserted to be “though a man die he will live again;” the false that when he dies he is dead for ever.

CHAPTER XIV

Important geographical discoveries in the Wabisa countries—Cruelty of the slave-trade—The Mazitu—Serious illness of Dr. Livingstone—Return to the ship.

In our course westwards, we at first passed over a gently undulating country, with a reddish clayey soil, which, from the heavy crops, appeared to be very fertile.  Many rivulets were crossed, some running southwards into the Bua, and others northwards into the Loangwa, a river which we formerly saw flowing into the Lake.  Further on, the water was chiefly found in pools and wells.  Then still further, in the same direction, some watercourses were said to flow into that same “Loangwa of the Lake,” and others into the Loangwa, which flows to the south-west, and enters the Zambesi at Zumbo, and is here called the “Loangwa of the Maravi.”  The trees were in general scraggy, and covered, exactly as they are in the damp climate of the Coast, with lichens, resembling orchilla-weed.  The maize, which loves rather a damp soil, had been planted on ridges to allow the superfluous moisture to run off.  Everything indicated a very humid climate, and the people warned us that, as the rains were near, we were likely to be prevented from returning by the country becoming flooded and impassable.

Villages, as usual encircled by euphorbia hedges, were numerous, and a great deal of grain had been cultivated around them.  Domestic fowls, in plenty, and pigeons with dovecots like those in Egypt were seen.  The people call themselves Matumboka, but the only difference between them and the rest of the Manganja is in the mode of tattooing the face.  Their language is the same.  Their distinctive mark consists of four tattooed lines diverging from the point between the eyebrows, which, in frowning, the muscles form into a furrow.  The other lines of tattooing, as in all Manganja, run in long seams, which crossing each other at certain angles form a great number of triangular spaces on the breast, back, arms, and thighs.  The cuticle is divided by a knife, and the edges of the incision are drawn apart till the true skin appears.  By a repetition of this process, lines of raised cicatrices are formed, which are thought to give beauty, no matter how much pain the fashion gives.

It would not be worth while to advert for a moment to the routine of travelling, or the little difficulties that beset every one who attempts to penetrate into a new country, were it not to show the great source of the power here possessed by slave-traders.  We needed help in carrying our goods, while our men were ill, though still able to march.  When we had settled with others for hire, we were often told, that the dealers in men had taken possession of some, and had taken them away altogether.  Other things led us to believe that the slave-traders carry matters with a high hand; and no wonder, for the possession of gunpowder gives them almost absolute power.  The mode by which tribes armed with bows and arrows carry on warfare, or defend themselves, is by ambuscade.  They never come out in open fight, but wait for the enemy ensconced behind trees, or in the long grass of the country, and shoot at him unawares.  Consequently, if men come against them with firearms, when, as is usually the case, the long grass is all burned off, the tribe attacked are as helpless as a wooden ship, possessing only signal guns, would be before an iron-clad steamer.  The time of year selected for this kind of warfare is nearly always that in which the grass is actually burnt off, or is so dry as readily to take fire.  The dry grass in Africa looks more like ripe English wheat late in the autumn, than anything else we can compare it to.  Let us imagine an English village standing in a field of this sort, bounded only by the horizon, and enemies setting fire to a line of a mile or two, by running along with bunches of burning straw in their hands, touching here and there the inflammable material,—the wind blowing towards the doomed village—the inhabitants with only one or two old muskets, but ten to one no powder,—the long line of flames, leaping thirty feet into the air with dense masses of black smoke—and pieces of charred grass falling down in showers.  Would not the stoutest English villager, armed only with the bow and arrow against the enemy’s musket, quail at the idea of breaking through that wall of fire?  When at a distance, we once saw a scene like this, and had the charred grass, literally as thick as flakes of black snow, falling around us, there was no difficulty in understanding the secret of the slave-trader’s power.

On the 21st of September, we arrived at the village of the chief Muasi, or Muazi; it is surrounded by a stockade, and embowered in very tall euphorbia-trees; their height, thirty or forty feet, shows that it has been inhabited for at least one generation.  A visitation of disease or death causes the headmen to change the site of their villages, and plant new hedges; but, though Muazi has suffered from the attacks of the Mazitu, he has evidently clung to his birthplace.  The village is situated about two miles south-west of a high hill called Kasungu, which gives the name to a district extending to the Loangwa of the Maravi.  Several other detached granite hills have been shot up on the plain, and many stockaded villages, all owing allegiance to Muazi, are scattered over it.

On our arrival, the chief was sitting in the smooth shady place, called Boalo, where all public business is transacted, with about two hundred men and boys around him.  We paid our guides with due ostentation.  Masiko, the tallest of our party, measured off the fathom of cloth agreed upon, and made it appear as long as possible, by facing round to the crowd, and cutting a few inches beyond what his outstretched arms could reach, to show that there was no deception.  This was by way of advertisement.  The people are mightily gratified at having a tall fellow to measure the cloth for them.  It pleases them even better than cutting it by a tape-line—though very few men of six feet high can measure off their own length with their outstretched arms.  Here, where Arab traders have been, the cubit called mokono, or elbow, begins to take the place of the fathom in use further south.  The measure is taken from the point of the bent elbow to the end of the middle finger.

We found, on visiting Muazi on the following day, that he was as frank and straightforward as could reasonably be expected.  He did not wish us to go to the N.N.W., because he carries on a considerable trade in ivory there.  We were anxious to get off the slave route, to people not visited before by traders; but Muazi naturally feared, that if we went to what is said to be a well-watered country, abounding in elephants, we might relieve him of the ivory which he now obtains at a cheap rate, and sells to the slave-traders as they pass Kasungu to the east; but at last he consented, warning us that “great difficulty would be experienced in obtaining food—a district had been depopulated by slave wars—and a night or two must be spent in it; but he would give us good guides, who would go three days with us, before turning, and then further progress must depend on ourselves.”  Some of our men having been ill ever since we mounted this highland plain, we remained two days with Muazi.