Nyasaland Sketches: In the Chikala Range
I
THE old ‘boma’ in the Chikala range, where I lived over six months, had been uninhabited for almost ten years when I entered it. Although it would be classed, in Europe, as quite a young house, it is an old one for Tropical Africa, where houses age in a decade as much as they do in Europe in a century. No one would look for a house in the remote and savage locality where it stands, twenty miles from the nearest white settlement, while the nearest Yao village is scattered at the ‘foot of the mountain,’ there being no native inhabitants at all on this eastern part of the range.
The boma, as its name implies, has been, during the brief period of its commission, a tax-collector’s residence; it is built of brick, with a corrugatediron roof, a large veranda, and bow windows, and its interior still shows many signs of the taste, and the love of comfort, which directed the builder in his work. It cannot be expected, however, that the structure could have, unattended and unlooked after, resisted the destructive effect of time and the seasons. There is scarcely a bow window with all the panes entire, not a curtain left, not a brass bolt unbroken. Stains and rusty nails on the walls bear testimony to the artistic proclivities of the last inhabitant; the wainscoting is, in many places, detached from the walls; the white-calico awnings stretched underneath the ceilings of the rooms are torn in parts, and in parts stained and eaten by the droppings of the bats. Only the beautiful fireplace of carved cedar has remained intact, with the added beauty of the patina acquired with age. The many traces of past comfort and elegance, the present dilapidated and neglected condition, the savage aspect of the surrounding scenery, the magnificent bushes of European roses right in front, of the veranda, a grove of thick mango trees just behind the house — all these contrasts give to the old boma a touch of romance, as if it were taken out of a chapter in a fairy tale.
It is built on a terrace, about 2000 feet above the plain, and is surrounded on three sides by an amphitheatre of hills, which form part of l he main range. This, the Chikala range, runs from east to west. The amphitheatre, from its eastern and western wings, rises gradually to a dome of granite over 5000 feet high, the highest point of the range, due north of the house. The latter faces south, embracing a view of half the compass over plains and mountains. To the left, Lake Chirwa — ten miles away at its nearest point during the dry season, but approaching its boundaries according to the volume of water brought by the rains — runs south to northeast. The two black island hills in its middle look like joints of beef on a silver dish.
During the dry season, the plain looks limitless, sky and veldt meeting in a haze along the horizon. During the rains, however, the whole view is changed. Beginning in the southwest with the majestic Mlanje range, nearly 10,000 feet high in its highest peak and barely sixty miles in length, mountain range follows mountain range all along the horizon, past and far round the lake, into Portuguese territory, with a few breaks only, through which the plain rolls on into the unknown.
Here and there, in the champaign, isolated hills rise, sometimes to a considerable height, the characteristic ‘island mountains’ of Tropical Africa. In the Nyika of East Africa those hills rise at regular intervals from the level plain. There I noticed a curious particular. I have climbed none on which I did not meet, somewhere near, or on, the top, a puff adder larger in size than any which I have ever seen elsewhere, either free or in captivity — a weird genius loci, probably centuries old, letting the tune rush by while it lies in a lethargic state of eternal digestion, punctuated by single meals at intervals of months. As none of my Masai companions ever showed the slightest inclination to kill one of these anchorites, but appeared to be opposed to my doing so, I came to the conclusion that they must be fetish.
Whether the mountain islands of Nyasaland share this peculiarity, I have not, so far, had occasion to ascertain, Lake Chirwa, however, enjoys a zoölogic speciality also — an almost unique distinction. The many crocodiles which inhabit it are not more dangerous to man than so many sheep! So I was assured by all those inhabitants of the lake shore whom I consulted on the subject. I asked them if they had charms. They said no: with those crocs there is no need of charms!
But Mother Nature, always anxious to correct any small anomalies which may occur in her household, has, to reëstablish the balance, — a hobby of hers, — peopled the lake with venomous water-snakes, dreaded by the fishermen as much as crocs are dreaded elsewhere. The natives say that they stand erect, cobra-fashion, among the reeds of the lake shore, half submerged by water, and when a man has passed them, but not before, they charge him.
This snake, which the Yao call Assábuhe, is most beautiful, being marked in an undulating pattern of black and brown and gray, with thin brightyellow straight lines running from head to tail. Barely two feet in length, and thick in proportion, it bears, with its stumpy tail, a certain resemblance to a puff adder. The form of its head, however, and the position of its fangs, suggest the colubrid. Its aggressiveness appears to be a fact, and distinguishes it from the land snakes.
The changements de décoration of the landscape exceed in variety anything that one could see on the stage. In autumn, or better, in spring, the veldt shows as many different colors as the rainbow. But as soon as the rains begin, these change into many shades of green, from emerald and apple-green to dark olive, grading, in the distance, into one uniform tone of bluish gray.
The colors of the hills, with the exception of the islands of the lake, which are always of a dark greenish-brown, vary according to the time of day. Those which roll away into Portuguese territory, as they recede, grow fainter and fainter, until they look like a breath on a pane of glass. Immediately after sunset, however, when the sky behind them is pistache-green, they appear clear-cut, heavy and transparent, like mountains of gray quartz. The high Mlanje mountains sometimes, at sunset, seem to intercept, with their dark-blue mass, the glare of an immense conflagration, the shine of which just peeps over the outline of their pinnacles; at other limes they are hidden by a bluish-gray wall of vapor, fringed with lilac all along the top; while the sky just above them is of an intense, luminous orange, which, as the night advances, grows blood-red.
Often, in the early morning, the whole plain is covered with a sheet of low-lying white mist, out of which the island mountains emerge like rocks out of a frozen arctic sea. Or else the lake alone, brilliant like a mirror under the horizontal rays of the rising sun, is covered as if with cotton-wool by a layer of densely packed white clouds, which follow its contours just as if they had been spread there by a careful hand.
With all its beauty, however, the landscape never loses that indescribable something which characterizes all African landscapes — something intensely melancholy, brooding, and ominous, as if some terrible event were held in suspense.
Clouds, as Sir Martin Conway says, are not a bit less beautiful than mountains, and they form, with these, during the rainy season, combinations and groups which remind one of Doré’s illustrations to Dante’s ‘ Inferno.’ Each chain of mountains will act independently of all the others, with its own particular set of clouds, its own thunderstorms, its ow n strokes of lightning. One range may be swathed in a sheet of torrential rain, while the other, through a rent in the clouds overhanging it, is struck by beams of sunlight. Occasionally, however, when it rains for good, a perpendicular, solid, gray wall of rain creeps slow ly, from the fast disappearing mountains, over lake and plain toward Chikala; then the plain vanishes, then the solitary tree at the far end of my terrace; and then it comes down on the corrugated-iron roof in one continuous, deafening roar.
One would imagine that no living creature, except a fish, would enjoy getting a tropical downpour on its back. To this my two ravens, Grip and Nevermore, — chance acquaintances with whom I have formed a solid friendship, — are exceptions. Instead of seeking shelter, which they could find in abundance far and near, they will, when overtaken by the avalanche, sit on an exposed granite boulder, their backs to the wind, with shoulders raised and head bent, like Mr. Dombey’s brother-in-law when his wife annoyed him, and apparently sink into a kind of torpor, as, under these conditions, they refuse to respond to the most tempting morsels of food!
The champaign is most beautiful during the period of the veldt fires, which begins tow ard the end of October and lasts until the rains are on. In the daytime the flames are invisible from here; but in calm weather great columns of smoke rise, like Moses’ pillar in the desert, sometimes to an immense height, and spread out in the sky to tremendous black clouds, which intercept the light of the sun and plunge into shade half the plain. In stormy weat her, the spirals of smoke rolling fast along the ground look like the steam of express trains running full speed. At night the flames are visible, and then the bush-fires look like burning cities, and make the onlooker think of sack and rapine and murder. Where they burn low, they suggest the keys of an organ of fire touched by invisible fingers.
The lake has its fires, too, but they begin later and cease later. It is full of reeds in many parts, and these the natives burn, to facilitate fishing during the rainy season.
But the most beautiful sight is when, in a still, calm night, the conflagration extends along a large segment of the eastern horizon, and the full moon rises out of it, as intensely luminous as the fire itself, like the birth of a planet out of a sun, when creation was still young.
II
At the northern end of the lake, almost due east from here, lies the village of a chief called Chikweo, which has just now been the theatre of a lion story more than usually dramatic. For several months past, a man-eating lion had been spreading terror among the villagers by periodical appearances, which were nearly always the occasion of the killing of a man or a woman. Several times he was frightened away by the men appearing en masse after he had seized his victim, but he had killed fourteen, and wounded six, so I was told, before his career ended.
This came about in this way. An old woman, who belonged to another tribe, had been living for some time at Chikweo’s village with her young daughter, who had a baby at her breast. These three were living in a hut built of logs, on the outskirts of the village. With characteristic native improvidence, on the night in question, in the early part of last December, they slept with the door of the hut open, and the lion crept in and jumped on the old woman. In a moment the daughter had made up her mind — to save the baby and sacrifice the mother. She slid out of the hut with the child, pulled the door to, dragged a heavy log of wood against it, and gave the alarm.
With the rapidity with which natives are capable of acting in an emergency, the villagers collected, brought more logs of wood, built a strong barricade all round the hut while the poor old woman was still alive and screaming for help; and then they sat down in a circle and — it was before midnight — waited for dawn.
At dawn — the old woman by that time was dead —the chief Chickweo came with his Snyder, jumped on to the roof, gave, through a hole, one shot to the lion, and went home to sleep, having, by drawing first blood, secured the government reward. After that, the lion was finished off by others, through the roof, partly with Chikweo’s Snyder, partly with spears.
It is possible that the woman might have been saved, if, instead of closing the door upon her and her terrible guest, her daughter had contented herself with rushing out and calling for help; or even if the people had reopened the door of the hut, as the lion would perhaps have been frightened by the noise and the sight of so many people, and might have tried to rush out. But the villagers thought that such an occasion to get the man-eater would never return if they let it slip.
If one considers how great is the love of natives for their mothers,— it is their one pure sentiment, — one can imagine how violent must have been, in the girl’s heart, the conflict between the love which she bore her mother and that which she felt for her child.
The chief, sleek and debonair, called on me on his way to Tomba with the lion’s skin, and gave me all the details. When he mentioned the shutting-up of the old woman with the lion, he suppressed a smile. He told me that the animal — as could be seen from the skin — was very old, with part of its teeth gone and the rest in a bad condition. That it was frightfully hungry became evident from the fact that it did not allow the vicinity of so many people to disturb it in its meal; and that, after it had finished devouring its victim, of whom there remained only the head and the larger bones, it killed and ate all the chickens in the hut! There was a remarkable sequel to the tragedy. Chikweo told me that, on the day that followed it, on the very morning of the day when he passed my place with the skin, a lioness, believed to be the man-eater’s consort, came into the village, killed one man, and went away again. She had never been known to kill anybody before, and she has made no reappearance up to the time of writing this, three months later. When last I asked after her, I was told: ‘Oh, she has left, she has gone into Portuguese territory!’ One must admit that this single murder of the lioness looks uncommonly like an act of vendetta.
Lions are probably very long-lived. I believe that the longest authenticated duration of a lion’s life in captivity is seventy years; and one may safely assume that, when they enjoy their freedom under congenial circumstances with no enemies to speak of, man excepted, they live much longer. That they are monogamous is certain, although the assertion made by some, that they mate only once in their lives, is open to doubt, and would be difficult to prove. The affection that unites male and female is a sentiment as strong among the higher mammals, and felines in particular, as it is among human beings, if not stronger.
To the broad-minded observer it must surely appear rather unfair on the part of the ‘destroyer,’ or the ‘lord’ (as some prefer to be called), of creation, that he calls ‘savage’ all those animals that feed as he himself does! They eat their meat raw — but some human athletes and valetudinarians do that too — but they slaughter their victims with infinitely less cruelty than man — instantaneously always, and with no preparations at all. If lions, which are forced by dire necessity to kill a man, sometimes make a mistake in this respect, it is only because they are unfamiliar with his anatomy. Maneaters are no doubt objectionable; but such individuals are rare, and their action is the consequence of homicidal mania, or of old age and helplessness.
Leaving quite out of the question the cannibals of Oceania and West Africa, white men have been known, and not so seldom either, to devour one another when the second alternative was death from starvation. And lions and leopards have the distinction here, that they never commit cannibalism. They fight, they kill each other, and I am afraid that very old lions sometimes have a bad time at the hands of younger members of the community; but, according to all accounts, they never eat one another, however hungry they may be.
III
The northern half of the compass is taken up, at close range, by the amphitheatre of hills which forms the background of the boma terrace. While the high dome of the centre is sheer granite, almost down to its base, its two wings are formed by tier after tier of huge boulders, the gaps being filled by densely growing, dark-foliaged trees.
Some of the boulders are crenelated with lichens, others tainted white with the droppings of birds. On many of them stand solitary trees of considerable height. Their exposed roots, running down forty and fifty feet, as broad sometimes as a small stream, flattened against the rock, bleached as white as ivory, clutch the granite in a grip so tight that one imagines one sees the strain of the gigantic effort, as in the arms of an athlete or the tentacles of an octopus. Who can say how long the strain of the embrace has lasted?
The appearance of a human being on the footpath which skirts the eastern slope of the amphitheatre is usually the signal for a concert of whistling sounds in the rocks above, beginning with isolated notes and increasing in number, until they seem to proceed from almost every one of the huge boulders. Birds or boys might whistle in this manner; the virtuosi are, however, neither of these bipeds, but rock rabbits, of which a few families live among the rocks. These interesting, harmless little creatures have of the rabbit only the name; they are no relations of those rodents, but actually the smallest cousins of the elephant. As climbers, they are unsurpassed, being able to scale almost perpendicular flat surfaces, like lizards. Their nests, built adhering to the foot of overhanging boulders, resemble very large swallows’ nests. They are, unfortunately, prized as an article of diet by the natives, who persecute them ruthlessly.
A large and beautiful lizard, common to all the mountainous countries of Tropical Africa, brings a bright touch of color to those granite boulders which it has elected as its domicile. Its head and neck are a brilliant chrome-yellow, its body sea-green, its tail turquoiseblue. Being of an inquisitive turn of mind, it scans the approach of the stranger with marked curiosity, by moving its head up and down, before it rushes to conceal itself in some crevice. If one keeps very quiet, however, it will come back, and, if she happens to be present, start courting its lady, indifferent to the fact that she has no beautiful colors to boast of on her plain brown body. It is very amusing to watch them at play, running round and round and making love to one another, at which latter game their habits are remarkably like those of dogs. In order to attract them to a certain rock, and accustom them to my presence, I tried to lure them with insects, which I deposited on the boulder; but I signally failed in the beginning, as live insects of course ran away, and the lizards would not touch dead ones. And then I had the lucky idea of collecting the clay nests of a certain ubiquitous wasp, which builds them all over a house or a tent, in the most improbable places, including such things as the sleeve of a coat. There the wasp deposits—in separate compartments — the paralyzed bodies of all sorts of maggots, caterpillars, and spiders, making the nest serve both as a casket and as a larder for its own young. I extracted those unfortunate paralytics, some of which, having accomplished their ghastly destiny, were already metamorphosed into full-grown wasp pupæ. My experiment afforded me proof that the outraged creatures lose nothing of their freshness in their living tombs, as the lizards devoured them with the greatest gusto.
The slope of the mountain where the rock rabbits dwell is visited and occupied temporarily and alternately by a large herd of yellow baboons, and a herd of black monkeys, of the kind called ‘kimas’ by the Swahilis. These monkeys are beautiful creatures, with hair almost black, and the full-grown adults nearly attain the size of a female baboon. Unfortunately, however, fullgrown individuals are rare, the reason being, I am afraid, that their skin and flesh are much in demand.
The relations of these two tribes are, I am sorry to say, strained. They never occupy together the same side of the range. The baboons will come and stay for a week perhaps, and then the kimas will come and stay as long — it is always, however, turn and turn about; when one nationality turns up, the other goes. While the voices of the apes vary largely, according to the sex and the age of t he individuals, and while the gamut of sounds which they do give forth is almost human in its extent, the monkeys are singularly behindhand in this respect, and utter one kind of call only, an unmusical sound, like a very loud croaking. When it happens to be their turn for occupation, they collect, every evening, on the tops of the largest boulders, and, in a chorus, call out their farew ell to the setting sun.
There is something touching in this cult of the sun practised by many animals — the origin, perhaps, of man’s worship of the fixed star. When walking in the early morning, years ago, along the seabeach in Portuguese East Africa, and in Natal, in places where the virgin forest came down to the shore, I was always struck by the sight of the monkeys, which sat motionless in the topmost branches, with outstretched arms, looking at the sun as it rose out of the Indian Ocean. Many of the larger birds greet the rising sun with the same gesture of adoration.
The love of a mongoose for the sun amounts t o a passion. A few years ago, I was living in a house to which the rays of the setting sun came, through a cleft in the hills, at. one single spot only in the uninhabited back part of the house. A small mongoose that I had, although it hated to be alone, went there by ilself every day when tw ilight was near, and, lying down on the veranda, watched the sunset. As soon as it was gone, she would quietly come back into the house, seek her couch, and go to sleep. As long as I lived in that house, she never once missed the sunset. Before she died, a few years later, she laboriously climbed up to the thatched roof of a hut where I was then living, by a kind of staircase which I had erected, gave a long, last look at the sun, then came down again with great difficulty, and died.
On the top of the range, also to the east, live a couple of leopards. As they have been calling frequently, both at night and sometimes in the afternoon for several months past, they are supposed to have a family of young, this being a sure sign, t he natives say. They prey largely on the baboons, and no doubt on the kimas also, although I have not been able to ascertain that for certain. But as to the baboons, I can occasionally follow by mere sound — mostly at night but sometimes also in daytime — the developments of the chase. The old males of the baboons, always en vedette, begin by uttering their cavernous barks, an imposing and even formidable sound, not unlike the leopard’s own, but of far greater volume; the young males shout like boys of the human species, and the females scream in a higher key, the whole herd moving along up the slope while they produce these noises, which generally begin nearly at the foot of the slope, about level with my boma. From time to time, during a lull of the baboons’ barks and screams, the stalking leopard utters his grunting, halting growl. As a rule, the alert ends in nothing, the various noises ceasing gradually, as the baboons get out of reach and the leopard gives up the hunt. But when, instead of fizzling out, the adventure ends in piercing yells and screams, and the barks of t he old baboons become how ls of rage,
I know that the great cat has been successful in securing a good meal for the family. If I want additional proof, I get it on the following morning, when my two ravens, which live in the forest not far from the leopard’s lair, make no appearance at early breakfast as they invariably do otherwise, but stay away till noon, and then show little appetite.
The old saying, that it is an ill wind which blows no one any good, applies also to this predilection of leopards for baboon’s meat, quite apart from the benefit which they themselves and their clients may derive from it. Where many baboons live in a locality inhabited by leopards, the latter annoy the human inhabitants in the neighborhood very little, if at all. They do not go out of their way to capture goats in the villages — always a risky thing to do; and even dogs, which are so often killed by leopards, appear to be allowed to move about in comparative safety. This is perfectly accepted by the natives, who will not even prevent their small boys from climbing the mountain, into the leopards’ reserve.
Wild pigs stand to lions in the same relation as that of apes to leopards. Where lions live in the vicinity of wild pigs, the natives will treat them, as they do the leopards, as negligible quantities or — where the pigs are destructive to crops — even as desirable guests. Regularly, in February, when the maize is ripening, a couple of lions cross the Chikala range coming from the north, to make war on the wild boars which, at the same time, leave their forest haunts, to bring devastation into the fields. Why the lions should prefer, for these excursions, rainy weather to dry, is difficult to explain; but it is a fact that, so far, the only nights in which they called out their warning were nights of pouring rain.
Two things exist in nature, concerning which a mistake can never occur. These are the voice of the lion and the color of gold. Whoever hears the one or sees the other, knows what, it is. This does not mean, of course, that the reverse is the rule also. Many men have mistaken the cry of the ostrich for that of the lion, and tenderfoots’ gold for gold. The lion’s voice— his hunting voice, not his roar, which is so seldom heard — is absolutely unique in character, just as he to whom it belongs is unique. Although it is extremely powerful and carries to incredible distances, and although it sounds ominous, and sometimes awe-inspiring by implication, there is in reality nothing either cruel, or bloodthirsty, or even savage in the sound itself. To me it has always appeared as the most consummate expression of despair uttered by a powerful creature in moral, not in physical, distress.
Of these Chikala lions the natives seem to have as little fear as they have of the leopards of the range; and the knowledge that they are about does not prevent men from climbing up the mountain for bamboo or for wood.
Some fifteen years ago, when the coffee and rubber plantations of the Usambara were still young, and much damage w as done to them by the many herds of wild pigs which live there, the turning-up of a lion on an estate was looked upon as a favorable event by some of the German planters, who in consequence strictly protected him.
In this connection it may be interesting to record an event narrated by Emin Pasha —in one of that pioneer’s letters, I believe, published by Dr. Franz Stuhlman. Somewhere in Equatoria, Emin’s followers had dug a pit to catch big game, and a lion fell in. As soon as this was known, a native from the neighborhood, owner of many cattle, came running, and implored Emin to let the lion go. He said that, in exchange for a. weekly tribute of a bullock, the lion kept away all other beasts of prey, and himself, except his regular weekly allowance, never touched a head of cattle belonging to his ally. The man’s request was granted, a plank let down into the pit, and the lion climbed slowly out and went his way.
I was assured in the Pare mountains of what is now Tanganyika province, that a native there had formed a similar alliance with a leopard which, against the regular supply of a goat, protected from all enemies the owner’s herds, and even slept in the loft of his hut! I have failed to substantiate the truth of this story, but there is nothing intrinsically impossible in it.
Before the war, the German medical officer in charge of the sleeping-sickness commission on the west frontier of the colony, had a full-grown she-leopard, which was as tame as a dog. One of his colleagues told me that, whenever one of them returned home after an absence, the huge cat would stand up on its hind legs and rub its head against the face of its friend, in manner of welcome. A drawback was the circumstance that, at certain times, all the male leopards of the neighborhood appeared to have given themselves a rendezvous in the vicinity of the camp. The idyll, unfortunately, came to a tragic end, as those idylls always do, a statement for which one must leave the priority to Æschylus. The doctor’s leopard seized a dog belonging to a native; the native attempted to interfere, and the leopard killed him instead. So sentence of death was passed and carried out on the affectionate creature. A characteristic sequel, so my informer told me, was the appearance in the camp on the following day of the victim’s father, who simply said: ‘I want my bakhshish.’
That leopards have a sense of humor, although of a somewhat grim kind, they show by their curious habit of planting the bare skulls of animals which they have killed and eaten on a forked branch high up a tree.
Their common sense they show by their disregard of fire, which is so well known to natives who are accustomed to leopards, that they never use this means in order to keep them away from a hut or a camp.
These preventive measures are more successful where lions are concerned, but, even with regard to these, the sweeping notion imbibed in our childhood, that ‘wild beasts are afraid of fire,’ requires revision. Some lions avoid the fire, no doubt, but certainly not all. In British East Africa the natives used to say that large, flaming fires irritate lions; and I have certainly known cases where lions cleared a large fire as they would have cleared a fence. It would appear as if the most effective fire against lions were a low-burning, not flickering or flaring, but steady fire.
While the lion’s cry, on a dark rainy night, is a distinctly unwelcome sound to the traveler who sleeps in his tent, it has, on the other hand, when one hears it from inside four solid brick walls, an effect similar to that of a ghost story by a brightly burning fire, on a social winter evening.
A beautiful and imposing bird, by its numbers and by its powerful voice, attracts attention on the range as effectually as do the two felines just mentioned. It is a fishing eagle, with head and neck and half the body snowwhite, which owes to its remarkable vocal qualities its Latin surname: vocifcr. From long before sunrise till long after dark its clarion-call — which in some individuals resembles somewhat the whinny of an excited stallion — resounds about the heights of the range where it builds its eyrie. In many countries it has served me as a welcome signal that the night was nearly over and the day approaching. When it calls, it behaves in a peculiar manner: it poises in mid-air, and, while uttering its shriek, frantically and simultaneously moves up and down both head and neck and tail. It is exhilarating to see them dive for fish as I often did on Lake Nyasa. They ‘take a header’ into the water like any human champion diver, to emerge again and fly up into the air some hundred feet farther on, nearly always with large fish in their beaks. They are fortunately on the ‘protected ’ list in this country.
There are certain things, instantaneous pictures of the memory, often in themselves mere trifles, the thought of which brings back with extraordinary force the realization of the particular romance of a milieu — like Zarathustra’s lizard, or Rudyard Kipling’s ‘firefly in the cane.’ One may read whole books about Tropical Africa without feeling its atmosphere with the intensity impressed in a second by the mention, for instance, of a crocodile basking in the sun on a sand-bank by a lazy river; or of a solitary elephant standing under a mimosa tree in an expanse of Sanseveria, spraying itself with red laterite dust; or of lemurs dancing a fandango on the top of a coconut palm in the full moon of Zanzibar.
To this category belongs also the appearance of the bateleur eagle, most graceful of birds, sailing motionless above the champaign, under a clouded sky, a perfect Cupid’s arc in outline. The ecaudatus he was treated niggardly by Mother Nature in respect to his caudal appendage — makes occasional appearances here, but never, like his vociferous cousin, penetrates far up the range, as he prefers the plains, of which he is so characteristic an inhabitant. From the third or fourth year onward these great birds of prey mature slowly; the jaws grow a scarlet red, like those of some macaws, to which they have a further — moral — resemblance, in that, when brought up from childhood, they become fully as tame as a parrot. Large as it is, that magnificent eagle feeds, according to the natives, almost entirely on rats and mice and snakes, and never becomes a danger to the poultry yard. No doubt, the beautiful colored plate of a bateleur attacking a young jackal in Sir Harry Johnston’s Uganda is either a libel, or the portrait of an exceptionally enterprising individual.
IV
At the foot of the range, Mposa’s village straggles along, with interruptions, for nearly two miles.
As is the case in all Yao villages, each hut, in size like a small cottage at home, stands in its own grounds, sometimes with a small patch of maize attached to it. Where there is no garden, the whole place is kept free of vegetation and well swept; this gives to the village a singularly clean aspect. Here and there a very large tree stands by itself in grounds equally well swept, affording shade for palavers, and shelter to the chattering carrion-crows. Lots of wagtails fly unmolested betw ecn the houses, although it is a favorite pastime of the boys to hide in the high grass with a long rod, and kill small birds, when they balance in the reeds, by hitting them with it. Wagtails, however, are fetish, and never touched. The Yao have given them the pretty appellation, ‘doves of God.’ Children, goats, chickens, and dogs run about; the grown-up men, when not at work, either sit before the chief’s house, or play cards in front of their own. The women, never idle, are occupied on various household tasks.
On nearly all the roofs, fish from the lake, extended in rows, are drying in the sun, in a buzz of metallic flies. One kind of fish only is caught at the present season, a silurid in two or three sizes. The small ones, bent round in a circle, are stuck on rods in rows; the larger ones arc cut into two sides and flattened out. The second kind of fish, which favors deep water, is not caught until the rainy season is well advanced and the shallow lake has attained its full size.
It is well known that Sir Jonathan Hutchinson, the great English dermatologist, — who, by the way, fruitlessly endeavored, some twenty years ago, to persuade the world to abolish leperreserves as barbarous, inefficient, and unnecessary, — ascribed nearly all occurrences of leprosy to the consumption of insufficiently cured fish. If this is really the fact, one does not see how, at least for many years to come, the evil can be stopped among the millions of natives around the lakes; for one might as well expect them to give up breathing as eating fish. The establishment of curing-centres under government supervision appears to be the only practical solution.
Chief Mposa’s principal house is conspicuous by its size and its elevated, matted veranda, with two deck-chairs. He himself — quite apart from his picturesque attire, which consists of a red turban, a corduroy khaki-colorcd shirt, a dark-blue skirt, and a long sheathknife — certainly looks the most distinguished person in his village, being tall, dignified, and good-looking, with a short full beard. He might, from his aspect, be taken for a black Arab from Zanzibar. His subjects kneel to him, as he himself kneels to his invalided old mother; but his authority does not appear to be of a despotic kind; its chief manifestation probably consists in these outward tokens of respect.
If Mposa’s ‘grand air’ is due to his descent , this would furnish an argument to those who opine that the stronger qualities are inherited through women, as, in Yao dynasties, the laws of inheritance act in a way which one might compare to the advance of the knight on a chessboard. The sultan is succeeded, not by his own son, but by his eldest sister’s eldest son. It was, however, explained to me that, if this eldest son of the sister is ‘very stupid,’ his younger brother will succeed in his place; and if he should happen to be very stupid also, the third, and so on. It would be interesting to know by what standard the intelligence of these potential heirs is measured.
Mposa’s heir is being brought up here under his uncle’s eyes, although his mother lives in another district. I hear this was insisted upon by Mposa himself, which is certainly a sign of sound judgment. The boy is being looked after by his Tittle mother,’ as the Yao call the aunt on the mother’s side. When a Yao ment ions his mother, one never knows if he means his real mother or her sister. As a rule, he means the latter, because there is always a reluctance to refer in speech to the direct progenitors, apparently from a sense of veneration and respect.
The impression which the settlement makes is one of peaceful prosperity — a truthful one on the whole, so far, although beer-fights, with broken heads, occasionally occur. Unfortunately the country is now threatened with a partial famine, the maize crop having been spoiled, here as elsewhere, in consequence of the insufficient rainfall. It is true that the natives in the lake regions have an almost unlimited supply of fish to fall back upon, as well as — here in Chikala at least — reserves of rice, and the rock rabbits and klipspringers and other beasts of the mountain and of the plain; but they could no more be expected to live entirely on these than the Parisians of Marie Antoinette could have lived on the petits pains which the unfortunate Queen liked so much. Rut natives never bother much about the future, confident as they are that the Government will provide help if it comes to a pinch; besides, they are all fatalists, to a really exasperating extent.
Even without food worries, however, life in Mposa’s village is not without drawbacks, one of the worst being the great quantity of mosquitoes bred in the neighboring swamps. The notion, entertained by some Europeans, that natives do not suffer much from mosquito-bites, is quite wrong. They are probably as sensitive to them as we are. How much they suffer from them in Mposa’s village can be judged from the pathetic device to which they have recourse at the beginning of the rains, before the cool weather begins, when mosquitoes are at their worst. They keep men walking about, with beating drums, far into the night, so as to be prevented from going to sleep early, as attempts at an early sleep would be frustrated anyhow! So they are being kept awake by the drums until sleep really overpowers them, and then there is a chance of being able to outsleep the stinging. Some of them, however, are the lucky proprietors of mosquitocurtains; and there can be no doubt that, if the remainder seriously desired it, they could, by practising only a little economy, and by refraining from spending on trifles every shilling earned, soon find themselves in the same position. But negroes one and all resemble that guardsman of Ouida’s, who, rather than go to the exertion of taking off his boots, preferred to suffer agonies of pain from their narrowness.
On the whole, so long as it has sufficient to eat, the community appears to be as contented as any community which one could see in Europe, if not more so; and there are always occasions of excitement, mostly of a mild descript ion, to prevent it from getting unduly bored; as, for instance, the visit of the Resident or the Assistant Resident from Zomba, or that of a neighboring chief, or the passage of PoliceAskaris in search of a thief, or a beerfight, or a dance. There are, besides, tribal ceremonies and festivities, which take place at certain periods.
One of t he latter, which is of a character rather quaint, took place a couple of months ago at the close of the girls’ ‘uniago’ or period of initiation. During that period, which lasts for about a month, the girls, every age from childhood to full-grown womanhood being represented, live together in a large hut built especially for that purpose, and are there prepared by old women, the wisest in the village, for the vicissitudes — and the pleasures — of life, and instructed as to the lines to be followed in their relations with the other sex.
For several days before the time appointed for the disbandment of the young ladies, a couple of men, whose particular business it is, were busy in the forest, manufacturing, out of bark and grass, resemblances of lions, hippos, and crocodiles, hollow and sufficiently large to enable a man to crawl inside. These the men put on, like circus-clowns, on the evening of the last night, and, having reached in silence the house of initiation, began to imitate the movements of the animals which they impersonated, while the lion, in addition, produced with a large earthen vessel an admirable imitation of that animal’s voice.
The older girls, who had been warned, pretended to be horribly frightened; while the smaller ones were so in reality, and began to scream, and the lot rushed out at the back of the hut. After they had reached a certain distance, the grown-up girls explained to the younger ones that the whole thing was a joke, and then they all came back laughing, to examine the menagerie more closely.
The purpose of the whole affair, so I was told, is to teach the children to beware of wild beasts when they happen to meet them.
The show ends with dancing and pombe drinking for two days and two nights.