Sir Richard Francis Burton

“ But animated nature was wanting: we heard not a voice, we saw no inhabitant—all was profoundly still, a great green grave. A chain of islets forms the approach to a creek, below all mangrove and black vegetable mud, which stains the water, and bears roots upsticking like a system of harrows; above on both sides are rounded swelling hillocks, crowned with the cocoa and the clove. We sailed about on various tacks, and near sunset we anchored in the outer port, four or five miles distant from the town. ”

“ The Mganga of Usumbara has manifold duties. He must as often be a rain-stopper as a rain-healer. He sprinkles the stranger with the blood of sheep and other medicines, the aspersory being a cow’s tail: upon the departing guest he gently spits, bidding him go in peace and do the people no harm. He marks ivory with magic signs, to ensure the tusk safely reaching the coast. ”

“ The materials of the Gavana are brown thatch huts, clustering round a few one-storied, flat-roofed boxes of glaring lime and coral rag, equally rude within and without. On the N. West lies the ‘native’ half, which prolongs the Arab quarter beyond the enceinte; this suburb is wholly composed of sun-burned and wind-blackened hovels, forming a labyrinth of narrow lanes. Outside the faubourg clusters a thicketty plantation of cocoa and fruit trees; here was the favourite skirmishing-ground between the Sayyid’s troops and the Mazrui defenders of the city. ”

“ The numerous richly-clothed islands which line the shore, separated by beautiful and frequently spacious inlets and bounded behind by a delightful continent, rich in all the charms of luxuriant vegetation, present to the eye a prospect extremely enchanting, and would seem to indicate a degree of natural wealth equal to the most favoured regions of the known globe. Nothing could form a more striking contrast with that in view than the barren coast to the eastward of Juba. ”

“ Villages then began to appear perched like eyries upon the hilltops, and villagers gathered to watch our approach. The Baloch asked us to taste the water of a spring that rose hard by: sparkling in the cup it was icy cold, with a perceptible chalybeate flavour, and the fountain-head was stained with a coat of rust. Eastern, and we may say Southern, Africa from the Equator to the Cape, is a land whose stones are iron, and the people declare that they have dug brass. Copper has been long known, gold even longer, and the diamond, in the South at least, is the discovery of this our day. ”

“ Fish-hawks, white and brown-robed, soared high in ether. Lower down, bright fly-catchers hunted the yellow butterflies that rashly crossed from bank to bank; the dove coo’d in the denser foliage; the yellow vulture, apparently keeping a bright look-out, perched upon the topmost tree-crest overhanging the shoal water which lined the sides; the small grey kingfisher poised himself with twinkling wings; the snowy paddy-bird stood meditating upon the margin of the wave, while sober-coated curlews and sandpipers took short sharp runs, and stopped to dive beak into the dark vegetable mud. ”

“ Here Sheddad bin ’Ad built the City of Brass, and encrusted the hill-top with a silver dome, that shines with various and surprising colours. Here the Jánn, beings made of fire, as humans are of earth and mermen of water, hold their court, and baffle the attempts of man’s adventurous feet. The mountain recedes as the traveller advances, and the higher he ascends the loftier rises the summit. ”

“ Then, as the vessel in which we were to cruise southward was not expected from Zanzibar before the beginning of March, and we had a week to spare, it was resolved to try a fall with Behemoth.
The hippopotamus, called by the Wasawahili Kiboko and Mvo, and by the Arabs Bakar el Khor, ‘the creek-bullock,’ resembles a mammoth pig, with an equine head, rather than a horse or a cow. Like the mangrove, he loves the rivers and inlets where fresh water mingles with the briny tide, and, as on this coast he has been little molested, he is everywhere to be met with. ”

“ We passed three small Arab timber-craft which were laying in a cargo of red and white mangrove trunks, and in many places floated small rafts of palm-fronds ready to be guided down-stream. At sunset the tide, running like a mill-race, compelled our crew to pole up a little inlet near Pombui or Kipombui, a village on the left bank, well stockaded with split areca trunks. The people who are subject to Zanzibar, and are claimed by Kimwere, flocked out to welcome their strangers, laid down a bridge of cocoa-ribs, brought chairs, and offered a dish of small green mangoes, here a great luxury. ”

“ On the summit appeared the straggling lodges of the savages, pent-housed sheds of dried fronds, surrounded by sparse cultivation, lean cattle, and vegetation drooping for want of rain. The desert people were all armed, being in terror of the Wamasai, the natural enemies of their kind. None, however, carried guns, the citizens of Mombasah having strictly prohibited the importation of powder; a wise precaution which might be adopted by more civilized races upon the West African coast. ”

“ Gasi is surrounded by plantations, and the Arabs, unmolested by the Wadigo savages, to whom the fertile land belongs, live in comparative comfort. Our crew armed themselves to accompany my companion, who, despite the bad name of the people, was civilly received on shore, with sundry refreshments of cocoa-nut milk and cake of rasped pulp and rice-flour. The footprints of a small lion appeared upon the sands, but we were not young enough to undertake the fruitless toil of tracking it. ”

“ HILLS OF USUMBARA.
The men chip their teeth to points, and, like the Wasumbara, punch out in childhood one incisor from the lower jaw; a piece of dried rush or sugar-cane distends the ear-lobe to an unsightly size. All carried bows and arrows. Some shouldered such hoes and hatchets as English children use upon the sands: here bounteous earth, fertilized by the rains of heaven, requires merely the scratching of a man’s staff. Others led stunted curs, much like the pariah dogs of Hindostan, adorned with leather collars: I afterwards saw similar pets at the Yellalah of the Congo river. ”

“ Usumbara produces an abundance of tobacco, whose flavour is considered superior to the other growths of the mainland: it is therefore pounded to thin round cakes, neatly packed in banana-leaves, and exported to Zanzibar. With all their advantages, the Wasumbara are yet a moody, melancholy brood, a timid, dismal, and ignoble race, as indeed are for the most part those barbarians who have exchanged pastoral for agricultural life. Perhaps these children of the mist have too much mist, and they certainly have not learned the art of defending themselves against their raw mountain air. ”

“ Though exposed to the blighting salt breeze, the land wants nothing but water, and, this given, no man need ‘tread upon his neighbour’s toes.’ Arecas and cocoas, bushy mangoes and small custard-apples, the guava and 70the castor plant, the feathery manioc, and the broad-leaved papaw and plantain flourish upon its flanks. In the patches of black forest spared by the wild woodman, the copal, they say, and the Mvule, a majestic timber-tree whose huge trunk serves for planking and doors at Zanzibar, still linger. ”

“ These people, who are divided into half-a-dozen clans, occupy a fine high country which extends westward to Usumbara: they dwell in large villages, fenced to keep out the Wamasai, and they are agriculturists, fond of Jete, or public markets, at which they dispose of their grain to the coast-traders. Those whom we saw were poor-looking men: their bows were well turned and bent, with brass knobs and strings of cowgut; the notched and neatly feathered arrows had triangular iron piles. ”

“ Formed by a bight with a streamlet, and the Island of Tumbatu, with its little outliers, Manawamána and Popo (in Owen Moina and Benoth) , this roadstead is rendered dangerous during the Azyab, or N. East monsoon, by a heavy rolling sea and a coral-bound lee-shore. The coast has the usual edging of sand, clear as crystal, and of bright green mangrove, whilst an inner belt of darker jungle defends a country, here, as everywhere around, prodigiously fertile, green, and monotonous. ”

“ It is in general low, especially at the extremities, where it is thickly covered with a jungle and brushwood; but towards the middle the land rises into hills and gentle eminences, which are cultivated, and clothed with cocoa-nut trees. Besides the periodical rains which fall here from the month of March to September, the island itself is well-watered with a variety of springs, which unite and form a number of delightful streams, that flow during the dry season, and keep up that appearance of fertility and beauty, which it exhibits throughout the whole year. ”

“ At 6 P. M. the ‘Ministers’ ran back, and summoned us, breathless, to the ‘Palace.’ They led the way, through wind, and rain, and gathering gloom, to a clump of the usual huts, half hidden by trees, and spreading over a little eminence opposite to and below Fuga. We were allowed but three Baloch as escort. Their matchlocks were taken away, and a demand was put in for our swords, which of course we insisted upon retaining. The natural suspiciousness of the negro is always exaggerated by being in the neighbourhood of a more advanced race. Here even Hamdan became a Rustam. ”

“ The Riami discharging cargo, we walked into the jungle, followed by a ragged tail of men and boys, to inspect some old Portuguese wells: as we traversed the village all the women fled—a proof that El Islam here flourishes. This part of the island is thinly veiled with a red argillaceous soil which produces a thick and matted growth of thorny plants, creepers, and parasites: eastward, where the mould is deeper, there is richer vegetation, and a few stunted cocoas have taken root. ”

“ On the other hand, not a few nations, especially in the dawn of civilization, have risen despite their follies of faith: but these are peoples who have within them the germs of progress. Judaism did not make the Falasha of East Africa, nor the remote colonists of Southern Arabia, an intellectual people: the Jews of Aden, to this day, show no traces of mental superiority over their neighbours. Christianity has done nothing for Abyssinia or Egypt: these lands are inhabited by peoples which have remained as nearly stationary as it is possible for human nature. ”

“ The eternal humidity—páni jo ghano sukh, say the Banyans—unfavourable to human, fosters vegetable development in a luxuriance more oppressive than admirable. After a few minutes’ climb we entered Chak-Chak, which, like a Brazilian country-town, consists of one long narrow lane. It is formed by square huts of wattle and dab, raised upon platforms of tamped clay: each tenement has a ‘but’ and a ‘ben,’ and most are fronted by a deep verandah, where poultry, fruit, and stale fish are exposed for sale by many familiar faces hailing from Hindostan. ”

“ At the same time, contact with the slave-dealer has increased cupidity and has diminished hospitality: the African loses all sense of savage honour, without learning to replace it by commercial honesty, and all his ingenuity is devoted to the contrivance and the carrying out of ‘avanies.’ But where, on the other hand, the explorer must hew his own way—such was the case with Paul du Chaillu from the Gaboon region, and with myself up the Congo river—and where there is no prescriptive right of transit even for pay, the adventure waxes far more difficult and dangerous. ”

“ Continued steering S.W. about 21⁄2 miles from the land, in from 7 to 10 fathoms, white sand and coral, the Sylph keeping her course half way between us and the shore in regular soundings of 6 and 7 fathoms. This day’s sail presented the same barren prospect as the coast we had already traced; it was still low and sandy, remarkably white, and to all appearance completely desert; neither huts, people, nor cattle of any description to be observed. The shore was in many places rocky, and a high surf beat over it. ”

“ Mombasah is, as far as Nature made her, pleasing and picturesque, but man has done his best to spoil her work. A glorious ‘bush,’ a forest of tall trees, capped by waving palms, laced with llianas, and studded with shady mangoes, thick guavas, and fat baobabs, here forming natural avenues, there scattered as in a pleasure-ground, overspreads the vicinity of the town, whilst the more distant parts to the West, S. West, and N. West, are dense wild growths, virgin, as it were, and still sheltering the monkey and the hog, the hyæna and the wild cat. ”

“ No man can better appreciate the noble qualities of energy, courage, and perseverance which he so eminently possessed, than do I, who knew him for so many years, and who travelled with him as a brother, before the unfortunate rivalry respecting the Nile Sources arose like the ghost of discord between us, and was fanned to a flame by the jealousy and the ambition of “friends.”’ I claim only the right of telling the truth and the whole truth, and of speaking as freely of another as I would be spoken of myself in my own biography. ”

“ The interior is a mass of cultivation, manioc and sweet potato (Jezar) from Madagascar, superb mangoes and cocoas waving in the clear sea-breeze, and limes and oranges, the latter disposed, as by the Paraguayans, in long rows, which, at a distance, imitate the tea-field. Clove plantations adorn the uplands, and the giant Calabash (Adansonia digitata) stretches its stumpy, crooked arms over the clustering huts. The tree is at once majestic and grotesque ”

“ The sight of an instrument suggests to barbarians that the stranger is bringing down the sun, stopping the rain, breeding a pestilence, or bewitching the land; and the dazzle of a brass instrument awakes savage cupidity. Such operations are sometimes impossible, and often, as in North Africa, they are highly unadvisable. The climate and petite santé, to say nothing of catarrh and jungle fever, also rob man of energy as well as of health: he cannot, if he would, collect shells and beetles, whilst the lightest geodesical labours not unfrequently, as these pages show, end badly. ”

“ Petty pilferers to the backbone, they steal, magpie-like, by instinct, and from their impudent fingers nothing is safe. On the march they lag behind to see what can be ‘prigged,’ and not being professional porters, they are as restive as camels when receiving their loads. ‘Am I not a slave?’ is their excuse for every detected delinquency, and we must admit its full validity. One of these youths happening to be brother-in-law—after a fashion—to the Jemadar, requires almost superhuman efforts to prevent him loading the others with his own share. ”

“ The soil of the island is in general light and sandy towards the coast, but a little inland it is found to be a rich black mould, seemingly composed of decayed vegetation, and the numerous springs and periodical rains, with the excellent shelter afforded by the cocoa-nut trees, which everywhere cover the island, all conspire to render it extremely fruitful. Nothing can exceed the profusion of fruits abounding in every quarter, all of them excellent. ”