358 NATIVES OF EASTERN BRITISH EAST AFRICA part iii 



taken to a district very different in climate from their own, where 

 malaria sapped their strength, and mosquitoes soured their tempers. 



The men's fanatical devotion to their religion — a corrupt form of 

 Islam — increased the difficulty of handling them. A favourite observ- 

 ance was a weird dervish dance around a fire, which would last until 

 several of the men had thrown themselves into the flames in a fit of frenzy, 

 or fallen into them in a trance. These dances had to be suppressed as 

 they were injurious to the health of the men, but for this a subterfuge 

 was necessary ; they could not be directly prohibited, as they were said 

 to be an essential part of the men's religion, and it had been guaranteed 

 that this should not be interfered with. The fidelity of the men to 

 their creed was extraordinary. At first we thought one half of this was 

 affectation and the other half fraud. The men would not carry a 

 bottle of whisky from one part of the camp to another, though they 

 had to lift cases which were full of it ; they would continually leave 

 their work to pray, and seemed to accumulate arrears of prayer and 

 pay them off whenever an unpleasant task had to be done. But when at 

 Ngatana some of them died rather than take food which would have 

 saved them, because it had not been killed according to Mohammedan 

 rites, we were bound to respect, as well as to regret, their sturdy adhesion 

 to their faith. 



The headman Wasama was also the priest of the Somali. His 

 chant was the music which marked time at the dervish dances, and his 

 the exhortations that roused the dancers to their wildest fury. At sun- 

 rise and sunset he stood on his praying-mat in front of the line of 

 Somali, and led their devotions. But Wasama would never have pre- 

 ferred death to defilement ; when I mixed brandy with medicine for 

 the sick men, he would give them the dose and swear that the 

 " dowo " contained nothing unholy. He had been for some years an 

 interpreter on a man-of-war, and there he had learnt not only 

 " fo'castle English," but also the differences between an esoteric and an 

 exoteric faith. He preached the one, but was always ready to practise 

 the other, and his sermons were delivered in language of appalling 

 profanity. I remember once appeahng to him when a Somali tried to 

 shirk some work on the excuse that he was bound to go and pray. 

 Wasama expounded the orthodox Mohammedan rules for prayer in 

 language that would have scandalised Billingsgate. Often, when at his 

 devotions in one corner of the camp, his keen eye would detect a man 

 doing something that he ought not to do ; Wasama would at once leap 

 from his mat and hurl at the culprit a volley of blood-curdling oaths, 

 and then drop on to his mat again to conclude the interrupted prayer. 

 But in spite of his language, Wasama was a man who did high credit 

 to the Somali race. He was kind-hearted, devoted, energetic, courageous, 

 intelligent, and skilful. He and a few others like him did their best 

 to redeem the character of the rest. Wasama's brother-in-law, the 

 famous Dualla Idris (PI. XX.), is a Somali of the same type; by his services 



