June 20, 1885 
THE GRAPHIC 
6 35 
NATIVE DOORWAY 
not being parted with, so he himself is almost the exclusive 
dealer in live-stock, I amuse myself by a little friendly chaf¬ 
fering before lunch, but leave all serious purchases to my 
servants, for the natives 
invariably deceive me 
when I wish to buy, 
either palming off old 
scraggy fowls, bad 
eggs, and adulterated 
honey on my inex¬ 
perience, or else 
charging me ex¬ 
travagant prices. 
One little item 
may be noticed 
in this market 
which will show 
how observant 
and practical the 
people are, and 
how they seize 
any lawful means 
ofmakingmoney. 
I have only re¬ 
sided here, let us 
suppose, some few 
weeks, and yet the na¬ 
tives have noticed my fond¬ 
ness for eating blackberries, a 
thing they never do themselves for 
some reason or other. Consequently, 
without any hint from me, children have 
been sent by their parents to collect indus¬ 
triously all the berries to be got, and here 
they are, wrapped in banana leaves, on sale 
for a trifle in cloth or beads. Also many women 
have brought bundles of firewood, so neatly done 
up and chopped into such handy logs that, although it seems super¬ 
fluous to buy it, when one man’s mission in the station is to collect 
nothing else in the woods all day long, yet it is sold so cheaply, and 
is so conveniently ready for use, that I often purchase it, and feel 
by so doing that I am encouraging the enterprise and spirit of my 
black neighbours. 
After lunch I sit for an hour or two skinning birds; then, 
w'hen the afternoon sun is declining, I set out for another 
ramble. Perhaps before starting I sip a welcome cup of tea in 
the natural arbour behind my house. Then taking my sketch 
book, I wander forth in delicious aimlessness, now stopping to 
sketch a distant view of Mandara’s village, seen from the head 
of our ravine, now scrambling up a bracken-covered hill side in 
almost wild exuberance of spirits. “ How happy life seems here,” 
I stop and reflect to myself, as, my face all aglow with the flush 
of exercise, I rest awhile, seated on some grassy mound at the 
summit of the hill, and looking down on my busy settlement 
beneath, where the men at work are so many ants creeping two 
and fro, my gardens are green patches, and my houses might be 
the tiny habitations of leaves and twigs which some species of ants 
are wont to construct. Whilst I am gazing over this most varied 
prospect—over the tiny beginnings of a colony on the hill below, 
over the many ridges of banana-covered hills beyond, and further 
away the illimitable plains marked and patterned like a carpet with 
patches of purple forest, streaks of yellow sand, red hillocks, and 
pale green savannahs—a slight noise behind me attracts my atten¬ 
tion, and I look round to find a Chaga man regarding me 
with a friendly grin, ^hich exposes a row of filed and 
villainous teeth. It is my milkman, he who supplies me 
every morning with an extra quantity of milk which is needed 
for butter-making. A conversation ensues, wherein neither under¬ 
stands the other to any extent, for I am as yet ignorant of Ki- 
chaga, and my interlocutor knows no Swahili. 
However, he evidently wants me to do something, 
for like a dog he won’t leave me alone, but keeps 
going on a little way along the path, and then looking back. 
Sol gather that he wishes me to accompany him. We 
soon arrive at the hedge round a native compound, and, 
passing through the narrow triangular doorway, girt about with 
living tree-trunks, and blocked, if need be, by a rough-hewn 
massive plank, we enter a small yard wherein stand 
three buildings. One is a neatly-built store house, raised 
on piles (as may be seen in the illustration), and the other 
two beehive huts, surmounted with peaks like hay-cocks, 
goats and fat-tailed sheep are feeding on the pea-shucks which 
a woman, who is shelling peas, casts from time to time 
on the ground; and fowls are busy picking in the several 
rubbish heaps, or kitchen-middens, which stand outside 
the doorway. Little surprise is manifested at my entrance. 
Another woman comes out from the smaller house and stares 
for a short time at the unexpected arrival, but the woman 
shelling peas scarcely looks up from her work. Invited by my 
Chaga friend to make myself at home I sit on the only avail¬ 
able seat, a rough-hewn log cast on the ground, and com¬ 
mence a sketch of the scene before me. The. stone house is 
rapidly drawn in, the doorway of another dwelling is outlined, 
and I am just adventuring on a study of the seated figure shelling 
peas when she divines my intention, rises indignantly, and walks 
into her house. My host also seems a little uneasy, for the people 
look upon Art as magic, and imagine drawings are made of things 
and people for sorcerish reasons. However, I reassure him, put up my 
sketch book, and rise to go. This Chaga man is (and always was 
throughout my stay) exceedingly amiable, and thinks perhaps this time 
that his fears about magic have hurt my feelings, so he presses me 
to accept some green ears of Indian corn, and together we go to the 
corn-field, outside the compound, and cut some five or six cobs, 
which are tied together by their sheaths and hung over my arm. 
Thus burdened, and taking a friendly farewell, I descend the hill 
and walk back to my settlement. Here I find two or three natives 
have come to see me, bearing several live monkeys for sale. The 
poor creatures are tightly tied to forked sticks, and are so bound 
with withes and strips of bast that they can only grind their teeth 
in impotent rage. I do not really want them, as they are of a very 
common species, but to encourage the people to search for and 
bring me live things, I buy them for a small amount of cloth. 
Then the canines of the savage males are docked, and the monkeys 
are tied round the hips with leathern thongs fastened to tree trunks, 
and then relieved of their fetters and released. Whereon, of course, 
they career about at the length of their tether, vainly hoping to 
escape. Strange to say, they will all pause in their wild gyrations 
to eat bananas or other food that is thrown to them. (In the night, 
however, all escape, by gnawing resolutely through the leather bands 
which keep them in captivity.) 
When the monkeys are disposed of there is still half-an hour or so 
before sunset, so I induce the natives to sit at my feet and instruct me 
in their language. Ah ! If you knew how difficult it is to collect 
an accurate vocabulary you would be little disposed to blame 
travellers from savage regions who return without linguistic infor¬ 
mation. Think how you have to deal with people who have not 
the faintest conception of what you are about, except that it 
somehow has to do with magic, 
and is therefore not altogether ytx 
lawful. You are without an 
interpreter, and can 
only hold up objects at 
first, and imply, 
half by gesture, IT’ 
that you want to^ 
know their 
names. 
Then 
as to 
more 
intricate ques¬ 
tions, what 
NATIVE STOREHOUSE AND DWELLING 
weary work it is to elicit information, and how delighted one 
feels when some important doubt is solved, or a new explanation 
is unconsciously offered of some puzzling phenomena. The 
language of Kilima-njaro (Ivi-Chaga) is one of the Bantu group, 
which includes nearly all the African tongues south of the 
Equator. It is one of the prefix-governed tongues, and the forms 
of its various classesof prefixes are varying, but always show a common 
ancestral origin. The utmost number of known prefixes is by 
some computed at sixteen—by Bleck at eighteen, as he includes 
two /re-positions, “ ko ” and “mo” (“to” and “in”) with 
the regular prefixes. The origin and primary use of these 
prefixes is still disputed, but we may dimly guess at the original 
meaning of one or two. Thus, the first 
and second prefixes, “mu” and “ba,” 
seem perhaps related to the numerals 
one and two, which in their most 
archaic form are also “mu’ 
or “mo” and “ ba ” 
“ bali.” 
THE CAPTIVE 
Now in the language under consideration ail the sixteen classes of 
prefix (except the twelfth) are represented, but some of them are 
much altered from the typical form. My object is to obtain ex¬ 
amples of them all ; but I want particularly to ascertain the form 
of the eighth prefix (a plural one). Unfortunately I can’t ask any 
my friends, “What is your eighth prefix?” I should never be 
understood if I explained for a hundred years. I have to get at it in 
some other way. “What is this?” I ask, holding up a knife. 
“ Ki-osho,” they reply. “Just so,” I 
reflect, “‘ki’ is the seventh prefix, 
and the plural must give the form 
of the eighth.” “How do you 4 
say ‘many knives?’” I con¬ 
tinue; “‘ki-osho’ is one, 
what is for many 
“ Shingi ” (many), they 
reply. “No, but many 
knives ?” “Shingi” is again 
repeated. Then I ask, “ See, 
this is one knife — ki-osho 
kimo (holding up one finger). 
What is for two knives ? ” 
(holding up two fingers). 
“Two fingers,” they reply, 
looking up very much puzzled. 
Then in despair I send for 
another knife, and placing 
it beside the original one 
again, ply them with a 
question. This only elicits 
the word for ‘ ‘ another ; ” 
but, at length, after many 
disappointments, they 
are induced to say 
“ ‘ Shi-osho shivi ’ ” 
{two knives ), which gives 
me “ shiosho ” as the 
plural of “ki-osho,” and con 
sequently ski is the form of MKINDU PALM 
the eighth prefix, and so on. 
But half-an hour soon exhausts 
their mental energies, and they are sent away with a present, 
while I go to my dinner. 
My little table has been laid with a snowy cloth, and 
the lamp placed on it spreads abroad its soft effulgence. 
My muddy boots are taken off, and my servant slips my 
feet into a pair of red morocco slippers that nestle into the 
skin rug just in front of my camp-chair. A pleasant book 
is placed at my side, and the gloom of the night and its 
weird children—the bats and the hawkmoths—are shut out 
by a heavy curtain, and I feel how pleasant and easy it is, 
even in Africa, to create an atmosphere of home. Here in 
three or four days my servants can build me a dwelling, 
and I can furnish it so that when my door is closed and 
my thoughts abstracted it needs an effort to realise that the 
wilderness lies outside. 
When my dinner, a meal of three courses—soup, meat, and 
honey dumplings—is finished, the cloth is cleared, the lamp 
trimmed, and the door closed for the night. Then for two hours 
I sit and write my diary, much in fact of what I am re-writing 
now. But at length my eyelids grow heavy, I find my head nodding 
over the book, so I relax from my labours, undress, and creep 
thankfully into my snug little bed. I feel as safe and as 
much at home as in a well-appointed English inn. Only the 
occasional wild laugh of a prowling hyaena, slinking round 
our settlement, or the distant booming roar of the hungry lion, 
recall to me, almost pleasantly, that I am lodging in the wilds 
of Africa. But slumber soon intervenes, and thus ends, as far as 
consciousness is concerned, what my diary has characterised as 
a “ thoroughly, happy day.” 
Now for the other side of the picture, 
AN UNHAPPY DAY 
Imagine, perhaps a week after the “ happy day ” herein 
described, that our relations with Mandara, the Chief of Moshi, 
have gradually assumed a disagreeable character. The African 
potentate may have suddenly awakened to the fact that the 
white man living in his country was not nearly so generous 
as white men ought to be. Perhaps he may have made a great 
number of exorbitant demands lately which I have felt com¬ 
pelled to refuse. He may for instance have asked on Monday 
for my bed, and on Tuesday for my favourite gun, on 
Wednesday for my despatch-box, and on Thursday for 
my sketch-book. And on Friday he may be brooding 
over each successive rebuff. Or perhaps it is some other 
cause of disappointment. He may be annoyed perhaps 
at my declining to buy his slaves and war-captives, 
^ or be angered at my refusal to send the Zanzibari 
labourers on my settlement to swell some one of his raiding 
armies on the western frontier. At any rate, Mandara 
feels that time has come to assert himself, and show the white 
man who is the master. Doubtless he is egged on by his 
worthless Swahili courtiers, who are very jealous and suspicious 
of my residence in Moshi, imagining that I must have come 
to spy the workings of the slave trade, and send information 
to the Consul on the coast of the despatch and destination 
