4 - 
THE GRAPHIC 
July ii, 18S; 
within fixed limits, cultivate the soil, and encourage traders to settle 
in their midst. In time these more civilised Masai will prevail in 
numbers and power over their still nomadic brethren, and thus 
Eastern Equatorial Africa will be opened up to profitable trade. 
At the very worst, however, the Masai are neither so dangerous 
nor so bloodthirsty as the Soudanese Arabs or the fanatical Tuaregs 
of the Sahara. If you are content to pay their tribute, you need 
not fight, and if you are forced to defend yourself, these people are 
powerless in front of a stockade, as they have no guns, and never throw 
their spears, using them only in a hand-to-hand fight. Thank good¬ 
ness, Mohammedanism has not yet reached them to turn them 
into mad fanatics or faithless cutthroats like their neighbours to the 
north and east. 
Almost exclusively the Masai inhabit the plains round the Kilima¬ 
njaro district, while the uplands still retain the older population of 
the country. This consists of people belonging linguistically and 
racially to the great Bantu family, which occupies nearly all Africa 
south of the Equator. From a linguistic point of view the Bantu 
are absolutely homogeneous—there is no mistaking a Bantu tongue 
for a member of any other family. But ethnologically the distinc¬ 
tion is much disputed. Some good authorities maintain that the 
Bantu races (Kaffirs, Congo, Swahili people, and the inhabitants of 
the great lakes) do not agree amongst themselves in any particular 
type, nor differ markedly, from other negroes on the Nile or the 
West Coast. This is a subject that I cannot enter into here, but, 
at any rate, their languages all re-mount to a common origin. 
The principal tribes in the district I am describingarethc Wa-Taveita 
on the River Lumi, at the base of Kilima-njaro, the Wa-Chaga, who 
under many chieftains and political divisions inhabit the great 
mountain, the Wa-Gweno and Wa-Kahe to the south, and the 
A-Kamba and Wa-Ta'ita to the North-East and East. 
The people of Taveita (Wa-Taveita) are the pleasantest I have 
ever encountered in Africa. They are of fair height, some of the 
men being both tall and robust, and attaining occasionally six feet 
in height. Their figures are often models of symmetry and 
grace. They anoint the body with fat and ochre, as do the 
neighbouring people already described. They frequently let 
the beard and moustache grow, and generally abstain from 
plucking out eyelashes and eyebrows as is done else 
where. Circumcision is general. Marriage i 
a mere matter of purchase, and no pre¬ 
tended capture of the bride is simulated 
here as in Chaga. Both sexes have little 
conception of decency, and whenever clothing 
is worn it is merely for adornment, or for 
warmth in the chilly mornings. They are 
affectionate and kindly in their family 
relations, and to give you a better 
glimpse of how they live and feel, I 
will cull the following extract from 
my diary, which describes the visit 
paid to a native’s compound in 
Taveita 
“Early this morning many friends came with offerings of milk, 
fowls, bananas, See. One man wanted me to come and see him at 
his home, so I went thither with my servant. Round his little 
compound was a kind of fence formed of the long mid ribs of the 
Merale palm laid lengthways. There were three houses inside, 
one for the woman, one for the man, and one for the goats and 
sheep. The man’s dwelling, though small, was far from uncom¬ 
fortable, and the interior was remarkable for the neatness that 
characterises the domestic arrangements of most Africans. There 
was a raised dais for the bed, on which skins were laid; a little 
three-cornered stool to sit on ; a fire burning in the centre of the 
floor ; spears, knives, horns 
of animals, and many 
, other articles ranged tidily 
very monkey-like as she sat and chewed sugar cane, holding it 
before her with both hands and gnawing it laterally with her teeth, 
while the further end of the cane was clutched between her 
lean thighs. My host caught his child to him with un- 
mistakeable affection. He carefully pinched and pressed 
the great protruded stomach as if divining this to be an 
unhealthy symptom. Seeing he was anxious, and 
wishing to say something kind, I offered to send 
medicine, which in the Swahili tongue is ‘ Dawa.’ 
But he only replied, 1 Dawa ? What do we know 
of dawa ? ! ’ Then he looked up to the sky 
in quite a simple way and said, ‘ Perhaps 
I luungu will cure him. Who knows ?— 
the other one died ! ’ 1 Then you had 
another child ? ’ I asked. ‘ Yes,’ he said, 
‘ but Muungu took it.’ He looked again 
at his child, and seeing its eyes were 
flecked with mucus, he cleaned them with 
great sucking kisses. At length I rose and 
said in a round-about way I had better 
be going. He put the child from him with a 
sigh, and rose and followed me to my camp, 
carrying a present of bananas.” 
The people of Taveita subsist mainly 
on vegetable food, of which they rear a 
great variety in their beautiful gardens. 
They also eat fish and meat. The fish are 
caught in the River Luvi, which runs through 
the settlement, by means of skilfully-made 
wicker-work traps and wears. They also con¬ 
struct from the mid ribs of a Raphia palm 
most clever rods and lines, the whole material coining from the 
palm, with a native-made iron hook superadded. 
The Wa-Taveita proper number about two 
A CHAGA FORGE 
MEN OF TAVEITA MAKING FIRE 
A CHAGA HOUSE 
round the walls. At the man’s earnest entreaty we partook of 
sour milk and sugar cane. He also wished us to try some 
rather dirty half-fried fish, but this not even all my adaptibility 
and politeness would permit me to do. Whilst I sat talking to him 
his wife, a motherly-looking soul, appeared leading a small, rather 
unhealthy child ; and was further followed by a genial old hag, my 
friend’s mother. This latter was a merry, social old body, though 
thou¬ 
sand. 
They speak 
a very interest¬ 
ing dialect, which 
retains several ar¬ 
chaic and interest¬ 
ing words. Much intercourse with traders from the coast has 
slightly robbed them of originality, and in their modes of life 
and forms of belief they somewhat ape the Wa-Swahili. Many of 
them are almost Mohammedans. I noticed one little detail about 
fire-making, which is worth recording. To produce fire, which is 
done in the common African way by rapidly drilling a hard-pointed 
stick into a small hole in a flat piece of wood, is the exclusive 
privilege of the men, and the secret is handed down from father to 
son, and never, under any circumstance—so they say—revealed to 
women. I asked one man why that was. “Oh,” he said, “if 
women knew how to make fire they would become our masters.” 
Nevertheless, without this drawback, tire fair sex in Taveita have 
pretty much their own way, I have known one or two leading 
matrons, who always insisted on have their voice in the deliberations 
of the Wazee or Elders, who govern Taveita. 
The Wa-Chaga of Kilima-njaro do not wholly resemble the people 
of Taveita either in appearance or disposition. They are neither so 
pleasing to look at, nor so pleasant to deal with. Sometimes they 
attain a fine stature, as in the case of Mandara, chief of Moshi, but 
generally they are short and sturdy. The women, however, are at times 
good-looking, and have very well-proportioned figures. The 
marriage ceremony (after the purchase-money has been paid) consists 
in the husband carrying off his wife pig-a-back, while the relatives 
and friends pursue with shrieks of laughter, affecting to try and 
lescue the screaming girl, but of course all this is simulated, and a 
survival of far-past customs, for nowadays a man only gets his wife 
when he has settled the bargain with his father-in-law. 
The Wa-Chaga, like the Wataveita, live much as Adam and Eve 
did in the Garden of Eden, and think it no shame to walk about 
without one scrap of clothing. Indeed, when cold and love of 
finery impels them to wear some cloak of skin or strip of cloth, it is 
confined to the shoulders and neck. 
The Wa-Chaga are clever smiths, and forge all kinds of 
utensils, weapons, and ornaments from the pig-iron' they 
receive from the country of Usanga, near Lake J ipe. The 
forge is but a pair of goat skin bellows, converging into 
hollow cone of wood, to which is added two more 
segments of stone, pierced through the centre, and 
ending in a stone nozzle, which is thrust into the 
furnace of charcoal. The bellows are kept steady 
by several pegs thrust into the ground, and a 
huge stone is often placed on the pipe to 
keep it firm. After the iron has been 
heated white hot in the charcoal, it is 
taken out by the iron pincers and beaten 
on a stone anvil. The Chaga smiths make 
not only spear-blades and knives of ap¬ 
parently tempered steel, but they can 
fabricate the finest and most delicate 
n ^ . chains. But of a rhinoceros horn they 
will make a beautifully turned and 
polished club, carved by hand, for they 
have no turning lathe. Pottery is almost 
unknown. Basket-work is carried to great 
perfection, and they can plait it so tightly 
that milk may be held in these utensils of 
— woven grass or banana fibre. The wooden 
platters that are in use show no little skill 
in shaping, as they are cut out of solid 
blocks of wood, and not joined in any 
way. 
But it is in their husbandry that the Wa-Chaga mostly excel. 
The wonderful skill with which they irrigate their terraced hill-sides 
by tiny runnels of water diverted from the main stream 
shows a considerable advancement in agriculture. 
Their time is constantly spent in tilling the soil, 
manuring it with ashes, raking it, and hoeing it with 
wooden hoes. All their agricultural implements, except 
choppers, adzes, and sickles, are of wood—wooden hoes, 
wooden stakes, and so on. They have a very clever mode 
of irrigating equally a given surface. As the lktle canals 
of water are always elevated above the cultivated plots, they 
will tap the stream at a convenient spot above the bed to be 
watered, and then turn the flow into a rough conduit 
^rnade of the hollow stems of bananas cut in half, the end 
of each stem overlapping the next. Then as the water enters the 
last joint it is freely turned right and left, dispensing the vivifying 
stream in all directions. 
Among the plants grown for food are maize, sweet potatoes, yams, 
arums, beans, peas, red millet, and the banana. Tobacco is also 
largely cultivated, and the natives chew it, and also consume it as 
snuff, mixed with salt. Honey is produced in immense quantities 
by the semi-wild bees which make their hives in the wooden case3 
put up by the natives among the forest trees. A large barrel full 
may be bought for two yards of cloth. 
The Wa-Chaga inhabit the western, southern, and eastern slopes 
of Kiliman-jaro. The northern side of the mountain is without any 
other inhabitants than roving bands of Masai. The principal Chaga 
states, beginning on the west, are Shira, Kibong’oto, Machame, 
Uru, Kibdso, Mpokomo, Moshi, Kirua, Kilerna, Marang’u, Mamba, 
Mwika, Rombo, Useri, and Kimangeiia. Although these little 
states are perpetually quarrelling among themselves, they are never¬ 
theless closely united by ties of blood, and possess a common lan¬ 
guage. The inhabitants of Meru, Kahe, and Ug'weno speak 
dialects so closely allied to Ki-Chaga, and 
resemble the people of Kilmia-njaro so closely, 
that they do not need any further description. 
Leaving this hasty review of 
the varieties of the genus Homo 
to be encountered in this part of 
Africa, I will 
now descend 
lower in the 
scale, and ra¬ 
pidly point out 
the most strik¬ 
ing forms pre¬ 
sented in the 
animals and 
plants. 
To begin with our near 
kinsfolk, the monkeys. I 
found these creatures much 
more abundantly present 
in East Central Africa than 
during my journeys on the 
West Coast. Although 
Western Africa is probably 
better provided with spe¬ 
cies of quadrumana than any other division of the continent, the 
monkeys are much scarcer in numbers and harder to see, possibly 
owing to the greater density of the forests. 
During eight months on the Congo I only saw monkeys twice in 
a wild state, and that in one place only ; and throughout my entire 
I. Wooden Hoe.—2. Leather Honey Case.—. 
'3. Gourd —4 Wooden Tray or Dish —5. Club 
Made from Rhinoceros Horn.—6. Knife. 
CHAGA UTENSILS 
