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

The heat of the weather steadily increases during this month (August), and foggy mornings are now rare.  A strong breeze ending in a gale blows up stream every night.  It came in the afternoon a few weeks ago, then later, and at present its arrival is near midnight; it makes our frail cabin-doors fly open before it, but continues only for a short time, and is succeeded by a dead calm.  Game becomes more abundant; near our wooding-places we see herds of zebras, both Burchell’s and the mountain variety, pallahs (Antelope melampus), waterbuck, and wild hogs, with the spoor of buffaloes and elephants.

Shiramba Dembé, on the right bank, is deserted; a few old iron guns show where a rebel stockade once stood; near the river above this, stands a magnificent Baobab hollowed out into a good-sized hut, with bark inside as well as without.  The old oaks in Sherwood Forest, when hollow, have the inside dead or rotten; but the Baobab, though stripped of its bark outside, and hollowed to a cavity inside, has the power of exuding new bark from its substance to both the outer and inner surfaces; so, a hut made like that in the oak called the “Forest Queen,” in Sherwood, would soon all be lined with bark.

The portions of the river called Shigogo and Shipanga are bordered by a low level expanse of marshy country, with occasional clumps of palm-trees and a few thorny acacias.  The river itself spreads out to a width of from three to four miles, with many islands, among which it is difficult to navigate, except when the river is in flood.  In front, a range of high hills from the north-east crosses and compresses it into a deep narrow channel, called the Lupata Gorge.  The Portuguese thought the steamer would not stem the current here; but as it was not more than about three knots, and as there was a strong breeze in our favour, steam and sails got her through with ease.  Heavy-laden canoes take two days to go up this pass.  A current sweeps round the little rocky promontories Chifura and Kangomba, forming whirlpools and eddies dangerous for the clumsy craft, which are dragged past with long ropes.

The paddlers place meal on these rocks as an offering to the turbulent deities, which they believe preside over spots fatal to many a large canoe.  We were slily told that native Portuguese take off their hats to these river gods, and pass in solemn silence; when safely beyond the promontories, they fire muskets, and, as we ought to do, give the canoe-men grog.  From the spoor of buffaloes and elephants it appears that these animals frequent Lupata in considerable numbers, and—we have often observed the association—the tsetse fly is common.  A horse for the Governor of Tette was sent in a canoe from Quillimane; and, lest it should be wrecked on the Chifura and Kangomba rocks, it was put on shore and sent in the daytime through the pass.  It was of course bitten by the tsetse, and died soon after; it was thought that the air of Tette had not agreed with it.  The currents above Lupata are stronger than those below; the country becomes more picturesque and hilly, and there is a larger population.

The ship anchored in the stream, off Tette, on the 8th September, 1858, and Dr. Livingstone went ashore in the boat.  No sooner did the Makololo recognize him, than they rushed to the water’s edge, and manifested great joy at seeing him again.  Some were hastening to embrace him, but others cried out, “Don’t touch him, you will spoil his new clothes.”  The five headmen came on board and listened in quiet sadness to the story of poor Sekwebu, who died at the Mauritius on his way to England.  “Men die in any country,” they observed, and then told us that thirty of their own number had died of smallpox, having been bewitched by the people of Tette, who envied them because, during the first year, none of their party had died.  Six of their young men, becoming tired of cutting firewood for a meagre pittance, proposed to go and dance for gain before some of the neighbouring chiefs.  “Don’t go,” said the others, “we don’t know the people of this country;” but the young men set out and visited an independent half-caste chief, a few miles to the north, named Chisaka, who some years ago burned all the Portuguese villas on the north bank of the river; afterwards the young men went to Bonga, son of another half-caste chief, who bade defiance to the Tette authorities, and had a stockade at the confluence of the Zambesi and Luenya, a few miles below that village.  Asking the Makololo whence they came, Bonga rejoined, “Why do you come from my enemy to me?  You have brought witchcraft medicine to kill me.”  In vain they protested that they did not belong to the country; they were strangers, and had come from afar with an Englishman.  The superstitious savage put them all to death.  “We do not grieve,” said their companions, “for the thirty victims of the smallpox, who were taken away by Morimo (God); but our hearts are sore for the six youths who were murdered by Bonga.”  Any hope of obtaining justice on the murderer was out of the question.  Bonga once caught a captain of the Portuguese army, and forced him to perform the menial labour of pounding maize in a wooden mortar.  No punishment followed on this outrage.  The Government of Lisbon has since given Bonga the honorary title of Captain, by way of coaxing him to own their authority; but he still holds his stockade.

Tette stands on a succession of low sandstone ridges on the right bank of the Zambesi, which is here nearly a thousand yards wide (960 yards).  Shallow ravines, running parallel with the river, form the streets, the houses being built on the ridges.  The whole surface of the streets, except narrow footpaths, were overrun with self-sown indigo, and tons of it might have been collected.  In fact indigo, senna, and stramonium, with a species of cassia, form the weeds of the place, which are annually hoed off and burned.  A wall of stone and mud surrounds the village, and the native population live in huts outside.  The fort and the church, near the river, are the strongholds; the natives having a salutary dread of the guns of the one, and a superstitious fear of the unknown power of the other.  The number of white inhabitants is small, and rather select, many of them having been considerately sent out of Portugal “for their country’s good.”  The military element preponderates in society; the convict and “incorrigible” class of soldiers, receiving very little pay, depend in great measure on the produce of the gardens of their black wives; the moral condition of the resulting population may be imagined.

Droughts are of frequent occurrence at Tette, and the crops suffer severely.  This may arise partly from the position of the town between the ranges of hills north and south, which appear to have a strong attraction for the rain-clouds.  It is often seen to rain on these hills when not a drop falls at Tette.  Our first season was one of drought.  Thrice had the women planted their gardens in vain, the seed, after just vegetating, was killed by the intense dry heat.  A fourth planting shared the same hard fate, and then some of the knowing ones discovered the cause of the clouds being frightened away: our unlucky rain-gauge in the garden.  We got a bad name through that same rain-gauge, and were regarded by many as a species of evil omen.  The Makololo in turn blamed the people of Tette for drought: “A number of witches live here, who won’t let it rain.”  Africans in general are sufficiently superstitious, but those of Tette are in this particular pre-eminent above their fellows.  Coming from many different tribes, all the rays of the separate superstitions converge into a focus at Tette, and burn out common sense from the minds of the mixed breed.  They believe that many evil spirits live in the air, the earth, and the water.  These invisible malicious beings are thought to inflict much suffering on the human race; but, as they have a weakness for beer and a craving for food, they may be propitiated from time to time by offerings of meat and drink.  The serpent is an object of worship, and hideous little images are hung in the huts of the sick and dying.  The uncontaminated Africans believe that Morungo, the Great Spirit who formed all things, lives above the stars; but they never pray to him, and know nothing of their relation to him, or of his interest in them.  The spirits of their departed ancestors are all good, according to their ideas, and on special occasions aid them in their enterprises.  When a man has his hair cut, he is careful to burn it, or bury it secretly, lest, falling into the hands of one who has an evil eye, or is a witch, it should be used as a charm to afflict him with headache.  They believe, too, that they will live after the death of the body, but do not know anything of the state of the Barimo (gods, or departed spirits).

The mango-tree grows luxuriantly above Lupata, and furnishes a grateful shade.  Its delicious fruit is superior to that on the coast.  For weeks the natives who have charge of the mangoes live entirely on the fruit, and, as some trees bear in November and some in March, while the main crop comes between, fruit in abundance may easily be obtained during four months of the year; but no native can be induced to plant a mango.  A wide-spread superstition has become riveted in the native mind, that if any one plants this tree he will soon die.  The Makololo, like other natives, were very fond of the fruit; but when told to take up some mango-stones, on their return, and plant them in their own country—they too having become deeply imbued with the belief that it was a suicidal act to do so—replied “they did not wish to die too soon.”  There is also a superstition even among the native Portuguese of Tette, that if a man plants coffee he will never afterwards be happy: they drink it, however, and seem the happier for it.

The Portuguese of Tette have many slaves, with all the usual vices of their class, as theft, lying, and impurity.  As a general rule the real Portuguese are tolerably humane masters and rarely treat a slave cruelly; this may be due as much to natural kindness of heart as to a fear of losing the slaves by their running away.  When they purchase an adult slave they buy at the same time, if possible, all his relations along with him.  They thus contrive to secure him to his new home by domestic ties.  Running away then would be to forsake all who hold a place in his heart, for the mere chance of acquiring a freedom, which would probably be forfeited on his entrance into the first native village, for the chief might, without compunction, again sell him into slavery.

A rather singular case of voluntary slavery came to our knowledge: a free black, an intelligent active young fellow, called Chibanti, who had been our pilot on the river, told us that he had sold himself into slavery.  On asking why he had done this, he replied that he was all alone in the world, had neither father nor mother, nor any one else to give him water when sick, or food when hungry; so he sold himself to Major Sicard, a notoriously kind master, whose slaves had little to do, and plenty to eat.  “And how much did you get for yourself?” we asked.  “Three thirty-yard pieces of cotton cloth,” he replied; “and I forthwith bought a man, a woman, and child, who cost me two of the pieces, and I had one piece left.”  This, at all events, showed a cool and calculating spirit; he afterwards bought more slaves, and in two years owned a sufficient number to man one of the large canoes.  His master subsequently employed him in carrying ivory to Quillimane, and gave him cloth to hire mariners for the voyage; he took his own slaves, of course, and thus drove a thriving business; and was fully convinced that he had made a good speculation by the sale of himself, for had he been sick his master must have supported him.  Occasionally some of the free blacks become slaves voluntarily by going through the simple but significant ceremony of breaking a spear in the presence of their future master.  A Portuguese officer, since dead, persuaded one of the Makololo to remain in Tette, instead of returning to his own country, and tried also to induce him to break a spear before him, and thus acknowledge himself his slave, but the man was too shrewd for this; he was a great elephant doctor, who accompanied the hunters, told them when to attack the huge beast, and gave them medicine to ensure success.  Unlike the real Portuguese, many of the half-castes are merciless slave-holders; their brutal treatment of the wretched slaves is notorious.  What a humane native of Portugal once said of them is appropriate if not true: “God made white men, and God made black men, but the devil made half-castes.”

The officers and merchants send parties of slaves under faithful headmen to hunt elephants and to trade in ivory, providing them with a certain quantity of cloth, beads, etc., and requiring so much ivory in return.  These slaves think that they have made a good thing of it, when they kill an elephant near a village, as the natives give them beer and meal in exchange for some of the elephant’s meat, and over every tusk that is brought there is expended a vast amount of time, talk, and beer.  Most of the Africans are natural-born traders, they love trade more for the sake of trading than for what they make by it.  An intelligent gentleman of Tette told us that native traders often come to him with a tusk for sale, consider the price he offers, demand more, talk over it, retire to consult about it, and at length go away without selling it; next day they try another merchant, talk, consider, get puzzled and go off as on the previous day, and continue this course daily until they have perhaps seen every merchant in the village, and then at last end by selling the precious tusk to some one for even less than the first merchant had offered.  Their love of dawdling in the transaction arises from the self-importance conferred on them by their being the object of the wheedling and coaxing of eager merchants, a feeling to which even the love of gain is subordinate.

The native medical profession is reasonably well represented.  In addition to the regular practitioners, who are a really useful class, and know something of their profession, and the nature and power of certain medicines, there are others who devote their talents to some speciality.  The elephant doctor prepares a medicine which is considered indispensable to the hunters when attacking that noble and sagacious beast; no hunter is willing to venture out before investing in this precious nostrum.  The crocodile doctor sells a charm which is believed to possess the singular virtue of protecting its owner from crocodiles.  Unwittingly we offended the crocodile school of medicine while at Tette, by shooting one of these huge reptiles as it lay basking in the sun on a sandbank; the doctors came to the Makololo in wrath, clamouring to know why the white man had shot their crocodile.

A shark’s hook was baited one evening with a dog, of which the crocodile is said to be particularly fond; but the doctors removed the bait, on the principle that the more crocodiles the more demand for medicine, or perhaps because they preferred to eat the dog themselves.  Many of the natives of this quarter are known, as in the South Seas, to eat the dog without paying any attention to its feeding.  The dice doctor or diviner is an important member of the community, being consulted by Portuguese and natives alike.  Part of his business is that of a detective, it being his duty to discover thieves.  When goods are stolen, he goes and looks at the place, casts his dice, and waits a few days, and then, for a consideration, tells who is the thief: he is generally correct, for he trusts not to his dice alone; he has confidential agents all over the village, by whose inquiries and information he is enabled to detect the culprit.  Since the introduction of muskets, gun doctors have sprung up, and they sell the medicine which professes to make good marksmen; others are rain doctors, etc., etc.  The various schools deal in little charms, which are hung round the purchaser’s neck to avert evil: some of them contain the medicine, others increase its power.

Indigo, about three or four feet high, grows in great luxuriance in the streets of Tette, and so does the senna plant.  The leaves are undistinguishable from those imported in England.  A small amount of first-rate cotton is cultivated by the native population for the manufacture of a coarse cloth.  A neighbouring tribe raises the sugar-cane, and makes a little sugar; but they use most primitive wooden rollers, and having no skill in mixing lime with the extracted juice, the product is of course of very inferior quality.  Plenty of magnetic iron ore is found near Tette, and coal also to any amount; a single cliff-seam measuring twenty-five feet in thickness.  It was found to burn well in the steamer on the first trial.  Gold is washed for in the beds of rivers, within a couple of days of Tette.  The natives are fully aware of its value, but seldom search for it, and never dig deeper than four or five feet.  They dread lest the falling in of the sand of the river’s bed should bury them.  In former times, when traders went with hundreds of slaves to the washings, the produce was considerable.  It is now insignificant.  The gold-producing lands have always been in the hands of independent tribes.  Deep cuttings near the sources of the gold-yielding streams seem never to have been tried here, as in California and Australia, nor has any machinery been used save common wooden basins for washing.

CHAPTER II

Kebrabasa Rapids—Tette—African fever—Exploration of the Shiré—Discovery of Lake Shirwa.

Our curiosity had been so much excited by the reports we had heard of the Kebrabasa rapids, that we resolved to make a short examination of them, and seized the opportunity of the Zambesi being unusually low, to endeavour to ascertain their character while uncovered by the water.  We reached them on the 9th of November.  The country between Tette and Panda Mokua, where navigation ends, is well wooded and hilly on both banks.  Panda Mokua is a hill two miles below the rapids, capped with dolomite containing copper ore.

Conspicuous among the trees, for its gigantic size, and bark coloured exactly like Egyptian syenite, is the burly Baobab.  It often makes the other trees of the forest look like mere bushes in comparison.  A hollow one, already mentioned, is 74 feet in circumference, another was 84, and some have been found on the West Coast which measure 100 feet.  The lofty range of Kebrabasa, consisting chiefly of conical hills, covered with scraggy trees, crosses the Zambesi, and confines it within a narrow, rough, and rocky dell of about a quarter of a mile in breadth; over this, which may be called the flood-bed of the river, large masses of rock are huddled in indescribable confusion.  The drawing, for the use of which, and of others, our thanks are due to Lord Russell, conveys but a faint idea of the scene, inasmuch as the hills which confine the river do not appear in the sketch.  The chief rock is syenite, some portions of which have a beautiful blue tinge like lapis lazuli diffused through them; others are grey.  Blocks of granite also abound, of a pinkish tinge; and these with metamorphic rocks, contorted, twisted, and thrown into every conceivable position, afford a picture of dislocation or unconformability which would gladden a geological lecturer’s heart; but at high flood this rough channel is all smoothed over, and it then conforms well with the river below it, which is half a mile wide.  In the dry season the stream runs at the bottom of a narrow and deep groove, whose sides are polished and fluted by the boiling action of the water in flood, like the rims of ancient Eastern wells by the draw-ropes.  The breadth of the groove is often not more than from forty to sixty yards, and it has some sharp turnings, double channels, and little cataracts in it.  As we steamed up, the masts of the “Ma Robert,” though some thirty feet high, did not reach the level of the flood-channel above, and the man in the chains sung out, “No bottom at ten fathoms.”  Huge pot-holes, as large as draw-wells, had been worn in the sides, and were so deep that in some instances, when protected from the sun by overhanging boulders, the water in them was quite cool.  Some of these holes had been worn right through, and only the side next the rock remained; while the sides of the groove of the flood-channel were polished as smooth as if they had gone through the granite-mills of Aberdeen.  The pressure of the water must be enormous to produce this polish.  It had wedged round pebbles into chinks and crannies of the rocks so firmly that, though they looked quite loose, they could not be moved except with a hammer.  The mighty power of the water here seen gave us an idea of what is going on in thousands of cataracts in the world.  All the information we had been able to obtain from our Portuguese friends amounted to this, that some three or four detached rocks jutted out of the river in Kebrabasa, which, though dangerous to the cumbersome native canoes, could be easily passed by a steamer, and that if one or two of these obstructions were blasted away with gunpowder, no difficulty would hereafter be experienced.  After we had painfully explored seven or eight miles of the rapid, we returned to the vessel satisfied that much greater labour was requisite for the mere examination of the cataracts than our friends supposed necessary to remove them; we therefore went down the river for fresh supplies, and made preparation for a more serious survey of this region.

The steamer having returned from the bar, we set out on the 22nd of November to examine the rapids of Kebrabasa.  We reached the foot of the hills again, late in the afternoon of the 24th, and anchored in the stream.  Canoe-men never sleep on the river, but always spend the night on shore.  The natives on the right bank, in the country called Shidima, who are Banyai, and even at this short distance from Tette, independent, and accustomed to lord it over Portuguese traders, wondered what could be our object in remaining afloat, and were naturally suspicious at our departing from the universal custom.

They hailed us from the bank in the evening with “Why don’t you come and sleep onshore like other people?”

The answer they received from our Makololo, who now felt as independent as the Banyai, was, “We are held to the bottom with iron; you may see we are not like your Bazungu.”

This hint, a little amplified, saved us from the usual exactions.  It is pleasant to give a present, but that pleasure the Banyai usually deny to strangers by making it a fine, and demanding it in such a supercilious way, that only a sorely cowed trader could bear it.  They often refuse to touch what is offered—throw it down and leave it—sneer at the trader’s slaves, and refuse a passage until the tribute is raised to the utmost extent of his means.

Leaving the steamer next morning, we proceeded on foot, accompanied by a native Portuguese and his men and a dozen Makololo, who carried our baggage.  The morning was pleasant, the hills on our right furnished for a time a delightful shade; but before long the path grew frightfully rough, and the hills no longer shielded us from the blazing sun.  Scarcely a vestige of a track was now visible; and, indeed, had not our guide assured us to the contrary, we should have been innocent of even the suspicion of a way along the patches of soft yielding sand, and on the great rocks over which we so painfully clambered.  These rocks have a singular appearance, from being dislocated and twisted in every direction, and covered with a thin black glaze, as if highly polished and coated with lamp-black varnish.  This seems to have been deposited while the river was in flood, for it covers only those rocks which lie between the highest water-mark and a line about four feet above the lowest.  Travellers who have visited the rapids of the Orinoco and the Congo say that the rocks there have a similar appearance, and it is attributed to some deposit from the water, formed only when the current is strong.  This may account for it in part here, as it prevails only where the narrow river is confined between masses of rock, backed by high hills, and where the current in floods is known to be the strongest; and it does not exist where the rocks are only on one side, with a sandy beach opposite, and a broad expanse of river between.  The hot rocks burnt the thick soles of our men’s feet, and sorely fatigued ourselves.  Our first day’s march did not exceed four miles in a straight line, and that we found more than enough to be pleasant.